THE MAFIA BOSS WATCHED ME CARRY A HEAVY SOUP TRAY PRESSED AGAINST MY HIP—THEN HIS FIANCÉE REVEALED A SECRET THAT COULD BURN CHICAGO TO THE GROUND

The cathedral grew deathly quiet save for the ragged breathing of the wounded and the distant wail of police sirens approaching the outer barricades.

Don Silvio Bellini stepped away from his daughter, walking slowly toward Luca with his hands held out palms-up in a universal gesture of complete surrender.

"I knew nothing of the New York shooters, Luca," Silvio said, his voice cracking with age and exhaustion.

"I swear to you on the graves of my parents, I thought this was simply a business merger."

"Your daughter tried to have a nine-year-old child murdered in a hospital bed this morning, Silvio," Luca replied, not even turning his head to look at the old man.

"And you sat across the breakfast table from me yesterday morning knowing she had signed away our ports to Manhattan."

Silvio lowered his head, the fight entirely drained from his frail body.

"Do what you must with the Bellini name," the old man whispered.

"Our line dies today."

"Your line dies when you allow vipers to nest in your nursery, Silvio," Luca said quietly.

"You will retire to your villa in Palermo before sunset."

"You will never set foot in the state of Illinois again."

"And your shipping lines will operate under Moretti oversight for the next thirty years to pay for the blood spilled on these stones."

Silvio nodded once, slow and defeated, before turning and walking slowly down the central aisle toward the sealed exit doors, a broken patriarch leaving his empire behind in the dust.

Mateo stepped forward, hauling Vanessa up by her elbows.

She didn't fight back; her arms hung limply at her sides, her ivory gown dragging through the blood on the floor like a tattered shroud.

"Where do we put her, boss?" Mateo asked.

"The eastern tower?"

"No," Luca said, his voice devoid of all mercy.

"Put her on a private cargo flight to Zurich tonight."

"She will spend the rest of her life in a private Swiss sanatorium under an assumed name, with no visitors, no communications, and no access to the outside world."

"She wanted to be a queen of an empire she never understood."

"Let her spend her remaining decades looking at the Alps through iron bars."

Vanessa let out a low, animalistic sob, her legs giving out as Mateo dragged her away toward the sacristy exit, her muffled cries echoing against the high stone arches until the heavy oak door banged shut behind them.

I stood alone in the balcony box, watching the carnage clear from the marble floor below.

The heavy adrenaline that had sustained my nerves for the last twenty-four hours was rapidly fading, leaving my limbs feeling heavy, cold, and hollow.

My cast throbbed against my wrist, and the platinum emerald pendant felt like a heavy anchor dragging me down into the stone floor.

I turned around, intending to slip away down the private spiral staircase before the police arrived to take formal statements.

"Claire."

The single word stopped me dead in my tracks.

I turned back around.

Luca Moretti was standing at the base of the balcony stairs, having climbed the stone steps two at a time while the enforcers cleared the nave.

He stood at the entrance of the box, his midnight-blue tuxedo jacket stained with a single streak of dust from the fallen debris, his dark hair slightly ruffled by the autumn wind whistling through the broken rose window.

He walked across the wooden floorboards until he stood right in front of me.

"Where are you going?" he asked softly.

"My shift is over, Mr. Moretti," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.

"The wedding didn't quite go according to the invitations, but the crisis has been resolved."

"I'll collect my final hours from Mateo on Monday."

Luca looked down at me for a long, silent moment.

He reached out, his warm, calloused fingers gently catching my chin and tilting my face upward so my eyes met his.

"Your shift ended the moment you walked into my study at three in the morning, Claire," he said, his voice dropping into that deep, intimate register that made time stand still.