Just a little teaser – there’s more to come I promise ;)

As promised here’s a little taste of my YA fiction book coming out in just over a month.

Alexis Angelo is the daughter of a mafia boss trying to navigate high school, boys and friends. Despite knowing the risks of the family business she is determined to follow in her father’s footsteps. Alexis deals with blackmail, a jealous sort-of-ex, mean girls and learns to fight back against it all, all before her sixteenth birthday. All the while and even bigger threat looms from the shadows. Will the sins of the father fall on the daughter or will the Angelo family manage to come out unscathed?

If that intrigued you in anyway what-so-ever then please, be my guest and keep reading.

Prologue

Since Alexis Angelo was dropped off on the first day of high school, she’d been the subject of many whispered conversations and nervous glances. Every time her father made headlines or was the subject of some second-rate news blogger, she heard her classmates and teachers alike wondering if she’d turn out to be just like him. Some of them wondered if her mum knew what she was in for when she married Anthony Angelo. Others believed that she had married him because of the danger and excitement of it all. A real-life mafia movie.

There were the few who were either very brave or very stupid who actually asked Alexis what it was her father did for a living. At first, she would give them ridiculous answers; lion tamer, pet psychologist, conquistador. She enjoyed watching them scramble to google the name for a Spanish explorer.

Now, two years on, she just glared at them until they left, which they now did very quickly. The same people who had once been her friends all through primary school suddenly treated her like the kid who ate his own snot.

One of them had been brave enough to tell Alexis that their parents told them to stop being her friend. They didn’t want their precious God-fearing children associated with a mobster’s daughter. There were others of course who actually believed all the stuff written about her family and they stayed away from her without any prompting from their parents. Those were the people that warned all the new kids about her, told them to stay away in case they got sucked into her family’s criminal ways.

After her uncle got arrested the summer before she started high school, Alexis had only a few friends outside of her Family that didn’t care what other people said. They’d stuck by her through everything, all the snide remarks and invasive questions. They didn’t care who her father was or what her uncle had been accused of, they just liked her for who she was. When you’re surrounded by overly privileged, silver spoon fed brats, finding a few that weren’t looking to work some kind of angle of their own was pretty rare.

What her classmates and teachers weren’t aware of during all of their whispering about her family, was that Tony Angelo, her dad, had one strict rule about his daughter and the family business; they were to stay very very far away from each other. He’d actually added a few more ‘verys’ when he originally made the rule but for the sake of time, it was shortened to two in recent recollections of that fateful day. However, her father didn’t realise that Alexis had every intention of one day being a part of the family business.

Some psychologists might think that the whole lifestyle had been romanticised by TV shows and movies but that wasn’t it. There was something about having the power to protect the people you love; she wanted that power. She knew everything that her parents did, it didn’t scare her like it probably should but then again, being a criminal was in her blood, it was as natural to her as breathing.

After all, she was a mafia princess.

So there you have it folks, your first real taste of what’s to come. It won’t be for everyone but that’s pretty much how life goes.

First looks at the cover art should be coming in the next few weeks so keep an eye out for that.

Until then, feel free to let me know what you thought of the prologue in the comments section. Meanwhile as I wait for the validation of others that authors, and lets face it almost everyone, crave but doesn’t admit to, I am going to go play some Legends of Zelda on my old Nintendo 64.

S.J. Smith