My employees host a savage livestream cursing me out as a cold-blooded Scrooge just because I didn't hand out frozen turkeys for Thanksgiving.

What the internet didn't know was that our company, rooted in a powerful mafia family, has one, single, unbreakable tradition for every major holiday: ten uncirculated American Eagle gold bullion coins hand-delivered directly from our private vault. No paper trails, no taxes, no exceptions.

As the whole internet was calling for my head after watching her livestream, I decided to give them exactly what they wanted. I sent out a company-wide memo: "To honor our cherished holiday traditions, the family gold distribution program will be discontinued this year. In its place, to ensure everyone experiences a traditional Thanksgiving, all employees will receive a complimentary, grocery-tier frozen turkey."

The memo dropped. The office exploded. A stampede of my employees swarmed my office door, practically on their knees begging me to bring back the gold.

Thanksgiving was right around the corner, and the office inside our front logistics firm was buzzing with holiday energy.

I had my assistant bring out a heavy wooden chest. Inside were velvet pouches packed with ten uncirculated gold bullion coins for every single person. This was our family tradition from day one. Every major holiday, you get solid gold straight from our private vault. No paper trails, no taxes, no exceptions.

Beatrice, our new marketing intern, poked her head out from her cubicle and wrinkled her nose as she watched my assistant hand them out.

"Wait, an empire this big doesn't even give us festive Thanksgiving turkeys?"

She said it loud enough for the entire open office to hear.

Elena, a veteran clerk who knew exactly what kind of mafia bloodline ran this place, quickly tugged her sleeve. "Beatrice, shut up. The gold coins are the gift," she whispered. "It's way better than some cheap grocery-store bird. You're new, you don't get it."

Another colleague chimed in. "Yeah, I used last year's coins to pay off my entire car loan cash-in-hand. Beats a frozen turkey any day."

"Oh, really?" Beatrice dragged out her words with pure Gen-Z sarcasm. "Gold is just money, but a traditional turkey is a real gesture. If a boss can't even bother to give us a holiday bird, it shows they don't care. There’s no real thought behind it, you know?"

The air in the room went dead silent. Elena and the guy quickly shrank back into their chairs.

Later that afternoon, there was a knock on my door. Beatrice stepped in clutching a tablet. "Victoria? Got a sec? I wanted to talk about our workplace culture and morale."

I nodded.

She shut the heavy, soundproof door and put on a practiced corporate smile.

"Victoria, as an industry leader with our family's massive status, we should really be leveling up our internal vibe and employee care."

"Go on," I said, leaning back.

"Take Thanksgiving, for example. The gold is great, totally. But it feels a little... transactional. It lacks that real family warmth. If we supplemented the gold with a curated turkey dinner for everyone, it would prove the company actually values us as human beings."

I stared at her, trying not to laugh at her sheer ignorance.

"Our tradition," I said slowly, "is to put absolute financial power directly into our people's hands. With ten gold coins, you can buy a hundred organic turkeys if you want. Or a plane ticket. Or fix your car. Giving people choices is infinitely more respectful than forcing a block of frozen meat on someone who might be a vegetarian."

Beatrice’s smile froze.

"Victoria, that's not what I mean. We need a dual approach. Material rewards plus emotional connection."

I cut her off. "I only know one rule. Putting real, untraceable wealth into my people's pockets and trusting them to use it is the highest form of respect I can show them."

She stood there, speechless for a second, before mumbling a tight, "It was just a suggestion."

She turned and marched out, her heels clicking loudly against the floor.

I didn't think much of it. Just a naive kid trying to make a point. When I first took over this family enterprise while the feds were breathing down our necks, things were incredibly brutal, and I always felt indebted to the original crew who stuck by me through the worst of it. So, once our empire was secure, I made sure our benefits were the absolute best in the business. I wanted to build a place where people under our wing could live with dignity.

I never imagined my own blood-bought generosity would be used as a leash to choke me.

Just before three, I noticed Marco—one of our senior customs brokers who was always complaining about his commission cuts.

He and Beatrice slipped away into the breakroom to talk trash. Peering through the glass, I could see them whispering over their coffee mugs.

"So? What'd the boss lady say?" Marco asked.

Beatrice scoffed. "She’s completely power-tripping. Spoke to me like I was some low-level street thug."

Marco's eyes darted around nervously. "Told you," he whispered back. "She's cheap, hoarding the family vaults while we take all the heat. Keep pressing her, Beatrice. It's about the principle, the vibe. You're doing the right thing."

Beatrice's chin lifted. "Don't worry, Marco. I've got this."

I watched through my glass window as she pulled out her phone. She set up her camera, took a few panning shots of her cubicle, and then flipped the lens to face herself. Her expression instantly changed. Her eyes welled up with tears, her lower lip trembled, and she looked completely heartbroken.

She hit record and started a livestream right there from her desk, her face a perfect mask of manufactured sorrow.

A cold pit formed in my stomach. I had a very, very bad feeling about this.

That night, as I was scrolling through my encrypted phone, a notification popped up from X. A clip of her livestream was going viral across the state.

The title read: "Exposing My Toxic Mob Boss: Denying Us Basic Holiday Respect."

The thumbnail was a close-up of Beatrice's face, a single, perfect tear rolling down her cheek.

I tapped play on the viral clip.

The video opened with a tracking shot of my closed office door. The text overlay read: "Finally got the balls to stand up to the syndicate boss for basic holiday respect."

Cut to a dramatic zoom-in on Beatrice's face at her desk, looking completely crushed. Text: "Was told I was a parasite and didn't understand how the underworld works."

The footage spliced in audio snips of my voice from our encounter, but it was heavily distorted, pitched down, and chopped up to make me sound like a ruthless, bloodthirsty tyrant.

The clip ended with her staring dead into the camera, her voice cracking right on cue.

"I don't need raw gold," she whimpered, squeezing out a few tears. "I just wanted a traditional Thanksgiving turkey, you know? Just a tiny bit of family spirit from the syndicate I sweat blood for. Is that… is that a crime?"

The engagement section below was an absolute war zone.

【Imagine running a whole criminal empire and being too broke to buy your workers a single meal. Embarrassing.】

【Leaking their front companies to the feds right now. Let’s see how much gold she has left after a massive IRS raid.】

【This mob boss thinks she’s untouchable. It’s 2026, sweetheart—time for the internet to take down the syndicate.】

I let out a harsh, dry laugh. Ten pure gold bullion coins had somehow been spun into "nothing."

The next morning, I'd barely poured my coffee when Beatrice and Marco walked into my office. Marco kept his hands rammed deep in his pockets, trying to play the harmless mediator.

"Victoria, look," he started, nervously shifting his weight. "Beatrice was just looking out for the crew. Nobody meant to disrespect the family. We all just want this to be a brotherhood we can be proud of, you know? True street solidarity. Everyone is talking on the encrypted group chats right now… maybe you could just meet the floor halfway?"

Beatrice stood right beside him, arms locked over her chest, radiating pure arrogance.

She held up her phone. "Victoria, this isn't just my fight anymore. The whole crew wants blood."

"Family policies," I said, my voice completely level, "are not rewritten by a public temper tantrum on social media."

Beatrice let out a sharp, mocking laugh.

"Gold is just cold cash. A turkey is respect. They are two entirely different things. And if you can't see that, Victoria, I'm sure the internet and the federal task force would love to explain it to you." It was an overt extortion attempt. "The livestream clip only has a few million views right now. If you don't play ball, I can't guarantee what internal family ledger leaks next."

An intern was actively blackmailing a mafia Don.

Right then, my assistant burst through the door, her face drained of color.

"Victoria, look at X. Beatrice’s clip was just picked up by major true-crime communities. The hashtag #ExposeTheRomanoFamily is trending nationwide."

I refreshed my feed. There it was.

But what actually sent a chill down my spine was scrolling through the list of accounts that liked her post. Right near the top was an encrypted profile picture I recognized instantly.

It was Elena. A senior logistics manager who had run the distribution desks for nearly a decade. Last year, when her oldest son got deep into debt with an underground loan shark syndicate, they threatened to send his severed fingers to her doorstep. I didn't just authorize a hundred thousand dollars in clean cash from my personal account to wipe his ledger clean—I personally sent my top enforcers to ensure the loan sharks broke their own pens, wiped the records, and understood that touching her blood meant war with me.

And now, here she was, silently giving Beatrice’s blackmail video a supportive little double-tap.

Beatrice caught the shift in my eyes. A vicious, triumphant smirk spread across her face. She tapped her screen, showing me the live view count ticking up by the thousands.

"So, Boss Lady," she said, her voice dripping with artificial pity. "Do you still think I'm the only one who feels this way?"

Right on cue, my desk phone buzzed violently. It was the front desk.

"Victoria, our public lines are melting down. People are calling us monsters and screaming death threats. Two of our main shipping partners just called panic-stricken, asking if we are about to hit a massive federal RICO indictment."

A catastrophic media firestorm, ignited by an ungrateful brat and a goddamn Thanksgiving turkey.

I looked at Beatrice’s smug, untouchable face and Marco’s pathetic, two-faced betrayal. And suddenly, the fatigue hit me.

Feed a stray dog steak for years, and the moment you offer them prime rib instead of gold, they will try to bite your hand off. I had shielded these people with my family's ultimate protection, and they had completely forgotten whose house they were standing in.

Overnight, our front operation became the internet's public enemy number one.

The family name, my corporate profile, and even a snapshot of me volunteering at a local orphanage were plastered across every radical online forum—recontextualized to make me look like a cynical monster laundering blood money through children.

My secure channels and personal inboxes were drowning in sheer malice. Internet vigilantes called me a blood-sucking mob monster, praying for the feds to dismantle our entire syndicate before the new year.

My head of PR, looking like she’d been dragged out of an interrogation room, slid a thick folder onto my desk.

"Victoria, we need to put out a statement right now. We disclose the ten-coin gold bullion distribution policy, attach verified, anonymized vault transaction logs. We can kill this story."

I rubbed my temples, staring at the paperwork.

"And the second we publish those private ledger entries," I countered, looking up at her, "does it look like an honest defense? Or does it look like a cornered cartel scrambling to hide its tracks from a grand jury?"

She froze, slowly closing the folder. She knew exactly what kind of legal suicide that would be.

I used to believe our absolute loyalty would protect us. I thought the crew valued the immunity my shadow empire gave them.

I was a fool.

I pulled up X and refreshed the thread. A brand-new anonymous post had been pinned right to the top of the feed by a burner account.

【LMAO nice try with the corporate spin. I work in the Romano logistics warehouse. Nobody has ever seen a single gold coin. The family is broke and hoarding cash, we just wanted a standard Thanksgiving dinner and this bitch treats us like sweatshop slaves.】

The post was gaining traction by the second. Beneath it, a wave of other "insiders" jumped on the bandwagon.

"Agreed, can confirm. The whole gold story is a total myth."

"The boss lady is so stingy, last year's performance bonus was literally a handful of loose ammunition and expired rations from the safehouse."

The smear campaign was spreading faster than my tech team could trace the IPs.

I stared at that pinned lie. I couldn't prove the exact keyboard it came from, but it could have been anyone on my payroll. That was the point of no return. If Beatrice lit the fuse, my own soldiers were the ones dumping rocket fuel on the flames.

Vivid memories flashed through my mind. Splitting cold takeout on a concrete floor during our first multi-million dollar federal raid. Buying out a luxury nightclub cash-in-hand to celebrate a foreman's ten-year milestone. Smuggling an entire family out of the country when a turf war got too close, paying their expenses for six months.

I had never, not once, shorted a single soul who bled for this syndicate.

And my reward was an entire crew lining up to take a free swing at my back. They happily cashed my untraceable wealth and slept soundly under my muscle, then happily pulled the trigger when they thought I was vulnerable. The "loyal family" I prided myself on running was nothing but a pack of wolves waiting for a weakness.

My PR manager was practically shaking. "Victoria, if we don't drop a counter-narrative in the next thirty minutes, the brand is completely dead."

I flicked her crisis document off the edge of the desk.

"Let it burn."

My voice didn't even shake.

"We aren't explaining a damn thing to these civilians. Draft a mandatory internal directive instead."

My assistant, hovering by the doorframe, looked absolutely terrified. "Boss... are you certain? If the public sees a cold mandate, won't they just—"

"Write it," I commanded, shutting her down.

I stood up, stepping over to the heavy glass windows overlooking the loading docks. A media crew was already setting up a tripod outside our perimeter fence.

A dark smile touched my lips. I didn't get outplayed by an intern. I got blinded by my own naive belief that honor still meant something in this racket.

From this moment on, Victoria Romano was done playing the benevolent matriarch. I was just the ruthless executive running the cartel.

I slammed my thumb down on the intercom.

"Listen up. Mandatory assembly tomorrow morning, 8 AM sharp, in the main shipping bay. The sole agenda is the final, irreversible settlement of this year's holiday distribution."

A heavy, breathless silence hung over the line before my assistant managed a shaky response.

"Boss... are we... settling their demands?"

"No."

I stared down at the media vans blocking my trucks, my tone turning as sharp and unforgiving as a switchblade.

"We're cleaning house."