Loading promotion info...
Donna, Your Daughter Was Eating Out of the Trash
Novelix
new
Completed
"As the ruthless Donna, the only person I cared about was my 200-pound daughter. To help her lose weight, I hired her a fitness coach and opened a reward account in her name. For every pound she lost, I deposited one hundred thousand dollars. Six months later, I flew home—and got a phone call. My daughter had been caught digging through a dumpster. For food. She was half-mad with hunger. She didn’t even recognize her own mother. She just knelt at my feet, sobbing, begging me not to call the police. That same night, the coach I hired was throwing herself a million-dollar birthday party. Paid for with my daughter’s money. “Everyone—bring your guns!” I roared. It was time to make her pay."
Chapters (4)
第1章
As the ruthless Donna, the only person I cared about was my 200-pound daughter.
To help her lose weight, I hired her a fitness coach and opened a reward account in her name.
For every pound she lost, I deposited one hundred thousand dollars.
Six months later, I flew home—and got a phone call.
My daughter had been caught digging through a dumpster.
For food.
She was half-mad with hunger. She didn’t even recognize her own mother. She just knelt at my feet, sobbing, begging me not to call the police.
That same night, the coach I hired was throwing herself a million-dollar birthday party.
Paid for with my daughter’s money.
“Everyone—bring your guns!” I roared.
It was time to make her pay.
......
After six months away from home, I finally rooted out the traitor in the gang and pressed my gun to his forehead.
"Please, Donna." Marco had worked for me for eleven years. Blood ran down his chin. "I have a wife. Kids. I made one mistake. One."
It was three in the morning. A private dock on the coast. Behind him, the sea was black.
"You sold my shipping routes to the Volkov family," I said. "That's business. I can forgive business."
"Yes. Yes. Thank you, Donna—"
"But then you asked about my daughter." I pushed the gun harder against his skull. "You tried to find her school. Her address. You asked which car drives her home."
His face went gray. "I never touched her. I swear on my kids. I never even—"
"Because of you, I spent six months on the other side of the ocean." My voice was quiet. "Because of you, I didn’t dare answer my daughter’s calls."
"Donna, please. Please—"
"Everyone who works for me knows one rule. Betray me, maybe you live. Go near my family, you don't."
I lowered the gun. "Tie the weights to his legs."
My men moved. Marco screamed. He begged. He offered money, names, anything.
I turned around.
Behind me, the splash was heavy. Then the dock went quiet.
Half an hour later, I was already aboard a private helicopter bound for home.
Finally, I could go back to my little girl.
Lily was seventeen. Quiet. Gentle.
To protect her, I never told her I was the Donna. She thought I was just a businesswoman.
Because of her weight, she was always a little insecure.
So before I left, I hired Madison Cole. I paid her fifty thousand a month to be Lily's training partner and companion.
Then I opened the reward account. Every pound Lily lost, one hundred thousand dollars went into Lily's account.
Six months later, four point two million dollars had been deposited into that account.
I was so proud of her.
Her eighteenth birthday is in two weeks. I already made my decision. This time, I would tell her the truth.
Her mother is not a businesswoman. Her mother runs the Moretti family.
And Lily is its only heir.
I spent the flight planning her party. Not a school party. A real one. Every boss in the underworld would come and bow to my little girl.
After six months of silence, I owed her the world.
Twelve hours later, my plane landed.
I walked down the stairs with gifts in both hands. I kept picturing her face when she saw me.
My phone rang. Unknown number.
"Is this Lily Moretti's mother?" A man's voice. Bored. Rude.
"Speaking."
"Your daughter got caught stealing food out of our garbage. She's locked in the back. Come pick her up, or we hand her to the cops."
I stopped walking. "What did you say?"
"You heard me, lady. Come get your kid."
He gave me an address. A steakhouse, downtown.
My hands went numb. The gift boxes nearly slipped from my fingers.
I looked at the gift boxes in my hands. Letters I wrote her every week for six months and never dared to send.
My daughter, digging through garbage.
I lifted my head, my whole body shaking now—not from fear.
From rage.
"Drive," I told my driver. "Faster."
The manager was a sweaty man in a stained shirt. He complained the whole way through the kitchen.
"Her phone was dead. Your number was in her pocket. You're lucky I didn't call the cops first. She's been hanging around my bins for days. Health inspector sees that, I get a fine—"
"Open the door."
Something in my voice shut him up. He opened it.
The smell came out first. Garbage. Chemicals.
Then I saw her.
My daughter was curled in the corner, between the mop buckets.
Her hair was matted. Her face was gray. Her lips were cracked and bleeding. Her clothes hung loose on her, and under them, every bone showed.
Her arms were covered in bruises. Old ones, yellow and fading. New ones, black and blue. There was a cut on her cheek that no one had cleaned.
She was holding half a piece of bread. It was gray. It had been on the floor.
She shoved it into her mouth, fast. Her eyes stayed on the door, watching who would come take it from her.
I was shaking with rage.
Someone starved my daughter. Someone beat her. Someone left her in a room full of trash to eat off the floor.
My Lily. My baby. The girl who never hurt anyone in her life.
Who dared?
Who dared touch my daughter?
第2章
"Get out," I told the manager.
He took one look at my face and got out.
I crossed the room and went down on my knees in front of my daughter.
"Lily." I kept my voice soft. "Baby, look at me."
She didn't look up. She looked terrified, curled tighter around the bread, and kept her eyes fixed on the floor.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Please don't call the police."
"Lily, it's me."
She didn't answer. She just kept whispering her apologies to the floor.
Then she dropped the bread and went down on her knees in front of me, her forehead almost touching the dirty floor.
"I'm sorry I stole the food." Her whole body was shaking. "I was too hungry. I haven't eaten in a week. I can pay you back, I promise. I'll clean the kitchen, I'll wash the dishes, I'll do anything you want. Just give me one more piece. Please."
I knelt there, my heart cut to pieces.
What had turned my princess into this—so broken she couldn’t even recognize her own mother?
This was the girl who used to call me every night to describe her dinner. She once spent twenty minutes on the phone explaining why one cake was better than another. She kept a notebook of restaurants she wanted to take me to someday.
Now she was kneeling on a filthy floor, promising anything for a piece of bread.
"You're getting food," I said. "All the food you want. Nobody is calling the police."
I stepped to the door and found my assistant Nina waiting outside with my driver. I sent her to the kitchen, and she came back with a basket of rolls and a plate of sliced steak. Lily grabbed two rolls at once and hunched over them, one arm curled around the plate to keep anyone from taking it.
While she ate, Nina brought me a charger, and I plugged in her phone.
The screen lit up. Forty-six missed calls, all from the same contact. Coach Madison.
I called her back.
She picked up on the second ring, and before I could say a word, a sharp young voice came through the speaker.
"Where the hell are you, you pig? Do you have any idea what time it is?"
Lily froze with the bread halfway to her mouth.
"It's my party tonight," the voice went on. "All my friends are coming. You're going to get over here and serve drinks, and you're going to smile while you do it. Behave, and I'll let you have a piece of my birthday cake. That's more than a pig like you deserves."
I took the phone off the table. "How dare you talk to her like that."
There was a pause. "Who is this? Put the pig on the phone."
"How dare you talk to Lily that way?"I said.
Madison laughed. "Oh, a hero. Listen, whoever you are, mind your own business. Do you have any idea who I am? Who backs me? I have mafia connections. One phone call, and you'll wish you never heard my name."
I laughed, cold and sharp.
In twenty years, no one had ever threatened me with the mafia.
Then Lily moved. She threw herself across the room and snatched the phone out of my hand.
"I'll come," she said into it. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'll be there in an hour. Please don't be mad."
She hung up , and she was crying.
"Please," she said. "You have to let me go. And please, please don't tell my mom about any of this."
I stared at her. "Why not?"
"Because my mom is just a businesswoman." Her voice cracked. "Madison's people are dangerous. If my mom finds out, she'll try to protect me, and they'll hurt her. They might kill her. Please. She's all I have."
My daughter had been starved, beaten, and locked in a room with the garbage. And kneeling there on that floor, her biggest fear was still for me.
Something hot ran down my face. I touched my cheek, and my fingers came away wet. It had been a long, long time since I cried.
I pulled her into my arms. She fought me. She was weak, but she fought anyway, pushing at my shoulders and begging me to run before Madison's people found us.
"Look at me." I held her face in both hands and made her look. "Lily. Look at me. Who am I?"
"Please, just let me go—"
"Who am I?"
She stopped fighting.
Her eyes moved across my face again, slower this time. They found my eyes, and they stayed there.
Her lips opened. It took her two tries to make a sound.
"Mom...?"
第3章
"Mom?"
Lily stared at me, blinking fast. "Mom… You came back?"
"I came back."
The word broke her.
She grabbed my jacket with both hands and fell apart, crying so hard she could barely breathe.
When she could finally talk, it all came out.
Madison had taken her bank account two months after I left.Lily’s bodyguard, Derek, helped her do it.
They made Lily sign papers she didn't understand, and from that day on, every dollar going into the account belonged to them.
"They said the faster I lost weight, the more money would come in," she whispered. "So they cut my food. First it was one meal a day. Then half a meal. Some days there was nothing at all."
I had paid four million dollars for my daughter's suffering.
"We have to go." Lily pulled at my sleeve, and her voice rose. "Mom, please. Derek has people. Real mafia people, with guns. If they find you here, they'll kill you."
"Slow down," I said. "What people?"
"Derek." Her voice dropped even lower. "Derek and his people."
Derek Shaw. I had found him on the street when he was fourteen, an orphan with nothing, and I gave him everything. School, training, a home.
Before I left, I made him Lily's bodyguard and put my own men under his command. I paid him so well that everyone at school thought he was some rich family's young master. At some point, he became Madison's boyfriend.
This was how he repaid me.
He had been coming to our house with men in dark cars. He carried a gun now, and he liked people to see it. He told everyone at school that he was the future of the family business.
Four months ago, she had begged a man at a gas station to call the police for her. Derek found out before the man even finished the call.
He shot the man in the leg, right in front of her, and told her that the next person who tried to help her would get the bullet in his head instead.
"I never asked anyone again," she said. "I couldn't. Someone else would get hurt because of me."
That was why she stayed silent for six months. Not because she was weak. Because she was kind.
I sat very still, and my hands were shaking again.
The men Derek used to terrorize my daughter were my men. My guns. Bought with my money, trained by my own people, and handed to him for one reason only: to keep her safe.
He had pointed all of it at her.
In his messages this past year, he had started to sound like the young prince of the family. I noticed it, and I had planned to correct him when I came home. A talk. Maybe a demotion.
A talk. I almost laughed out loud.
"Mom?" Lily was watching my face, frightened. "Please, we have to run."
Then the door opened, and the manager came back in.
He didn't look at Lily. He looked at me, at my watch, my rings, my coat, and I knew that look. He was counting.
"I've been thinking," he said. "I could lose my license over this. A starving kid in my storage room. Health code violations, child services, the news." He smiled at me. "But I'm a reasonable man. One million dollars, and tonight never happened."
"And if I say no?"
"Then my security footage goes online." He shrugged. "A rich woman in a fifty-thousand-dollar coat lets her daughter eat out of my garbage. You'll both be famous by morning."
I looked at him for a long moment.
Then I said one name. "Rocco."
The door opened again. My men came in one after another, until there were twelve of them standing between the manager and the exit. Twelve men in dark suits, and every one of them was holding a gun.
The manager's face went white. His mouth opened and closed without any sound, and then his legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees on his own dirty floor.
"Ma'am. Ma'am, please." His voice had completely changed. "I didn't know. I'm blind, I'm an idiot, please forgive me. The footage is yours, all of it, I'll delete everything right now. You want money? I'll pay you. You want the restaurant? Take it."
He tried to crawl toward Lily, but one of my men put a gun to his head and stopped him.
"Miss," he begged her. "Miss, I'm so sorry. Please tell your mother I'm sorry."
Lily just stared at him. An hour ago, this man had locked her in a room with the garbage. Now he was kneeling at her feet and crying.
"Mom." Lily pulled at my sleeve, and her voice was very small. "What's happening? Who are these people?"
I took her hand and held it tight.
"Don't be afraid, baby. Your mother is the Donna of the Moretti family."
I looked at the manager, white-faced on his crate, and then I looked back at my daughter.
"And everyone who ever hurt you is going to hell."
第4章
I took Lily straight to a private hospital uptown. The Moretti family had owned it for thirty years, and nobody who worked there ever asked questions.
Rocco stayed behind at the restaurant. By the time we reached the hospital, the security footage was in my hands, and the manager had decided it was much healthier to forget our faces.
The doctors checked Lily for two hours. Malnutrition. Dehydration. Old bruises over new ones. No broken bones, which was the only good news. The head doctor stood in front of me with the report and chose his words very carefully.
"Another few weeks of this," he said, "and we would be having a very different conversation."
Then I ordered food.
They set a table in the best private room, and the kitchen sent up everything Lily used to love. Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, chocolate cake, and the lemon pasta she used to beg me for on Sundays.
Lily ate like the food might disappear. She didn't bother with the knife. She tore the chicken with her hands and swallowed without chewing. Ten minutes in, she choked and nearly threw up everything she had eaten.
"Slow down." I reached out and held her wrist. "Baby, slow down. There's more. Nobody is taking it away."
She dropped the food and pushed her chair back from the table.
"I'm sorry," she said quickly. "I won't eat anymore. I promise."
I stared at her. "What?"
"If I eat, I'll get fat again." Her voice was small and fast. "Madison said that's why you left. She said you were ashamed of me, and if I got thin, you would come back. But if I get fat again, you'll leave again." She grabbed my hand and held on hard. "So I won't eat. Look, I can stop right now. Please don't go."
For six months, that girl had been telling my daughter that I left because of her body.
That was the moment I decided Madison Cole would not get a quick ending.
I sat down next to Lily, took the plate, and fed her myself, one small piece at a time.
But she turned her face away. "I don't deserve it," she whispered. "I'm not good at anything. Madison is smarter than me, and prettier, and everyone at school loves her. I don't know why you would even want a daughter like me."
"Listen to me." I put my hand on her cheek and turned her face back. "I carried you for nine months. You are my daughter, and you are the only heir of the Moretti family. Not Madison. Not anyone else. I don't care how smart or pretty anyone else is. They are not you."
"But—"
"Fat or thin, you are mine. In my eyes, you are the best thing in this world. Nothing else matters to me."
I held the fork up and waited.
She looked at me for a long time. Then she opened her mouth, and she let me feed her.
When the plate was empty, I wiped her mouth with a napkin and made her a promise.
"I'm going to teach you the first rule of our family," I said. "Never spare anyone who hurt you. An eye for an eye. Always."
Then I gave her the gift I had brought for her eighteenth birthday. A slim silver pistol, small enough for her hands, with L.M. cut into the grip.
She held it carefully with both hands. "Mom, I don't know how to—"
"You will learn," I said. "Starting tonight."
My phone buzzed. It was an alert from Lily's account, the one Madison had been draining for months.
One million dollars, just spent at a club called Onyx.
Madison was throwing herself a birthday party with my daughter's money, on the same night my daughter had been found eating garbage.
I stood up. "Rocco. The car."
Club Onyx was all marble and gold light. Every glass, every bottle, and every flower on every table had been paid for out of Lily's account. Madison seemed to have forgotten that she was nothing but a trainer I had hired.
Lily walked beside me in the new clothes I had brought her from Europe, and the silver pistol was in her pocket.
At the entrance, she stopped. "Mom." She touched the gun through the fabric. "Let me go in first. Alone. I want to try to handle it myself."
I looked at my daughter. Six hours ago, she was begging a stranger for bread. Now she was asking to walk into the fire by herself.
"Go," I said. "I'll be watching."
Rocco and I took the mezzanine, in the dark above the main floor. Below us, the party was loud, and at the center of it, in a white dress, was Madison Cole.
Lily walked in. She crossed the floor toward Madison, and I watched her straighten her back.
She never got to say a word.
Madison saw her, laughed, and shoved her hard with both hands. Lily hit the floor, and the whole crowd burst out laughing.
Then the big screen behind the stage lit up, and videos of my daughter started playing for the entire room.
