THE MAFIA BOSS I KISSED TO ESCAPE MY HUSBAND KNEW MY FATHER—THEN A SECRET FROM HIS MOTHER CHANGED EVERYTHING

For twenty-one years, Lorenzo had believed his mother was dead because his father had made enemies.

Now an old recording threatened to make his father one of the villains.

He stood in the apartment kitchen with his phone in his hand, staring at nothing.

“I was twelve when I found out what my father did for a living,” he said. “He told me good men made difficult choices. When I was seventeen, I learned he called cruelty a choice when he couldn't bear to call it what it was.”

“Bennett hasn't identified the voices yet.”

“I know what he sounded like.”

“Knowing his voice doesn't tell you what happened.”

Lorenzo looked at me.

“What if he knew the workers were locked in?”

“Then he bears responsibility for what he did or didn't do. That doesn't become your responsibility because you share his name.”

He laughed bitterly. “It did when I inherited his organization.”

“Then it's your responsibility to decide what happens to it now.”

He set the phone down.

“You're the first person who's said that without asking for something in return.”

I wanted to tell him that he could walk away from all of it. But I didn't know what walking away meant when people depended on a complicated network of businesses and men with guns.

“Don't become a different man for me,” I said. “Become someone you can live with.”

He watched me for a long moment.

“I'm trying.”

***

The next morning, Agent Bennett met us with a preliminary forensic report. The cassette appeared authentic, though experts still needed to determine whether every voice could be attributed with confidence. In one section, Vincent Caruso could be heard instructing someone to keep a loading door secured. Another man protested that workers were still inside.

“The protesting voice may be Antonio DeMarco,” Bennett said. “We have independent samples for comparison.”

Lorenzo exhaled slowly.

“That sounds like him,” he said.

Bennett nodded. “If it is, he may have known what was happening and still failed to intervene. We won't simplify that.”

“No,” Lorenzo said. “We won't.”

The investigation was expanding. Bennett described lawful searches of certain business records, interviews with retired employees, and a financial trail pointing toward Caruso's companies. The court records concerning the bakery were being preserved separately.

For one hopeful hour, it seemed the evidence would be enough.

Then Camille called.

“Rebecca, Eric has disappeared from his usual addresses. His attorney says he can't reach him.”

“Is he hiding?”

“We don't know. But Detective Porter wants you to take additional precautions.”

The same old fear tightened my throat.

Lorenzo listened without speaking.

“I won't disappear because he's angry,” I said after the call.

“No,” Lorenzo agreed. “You won't.”

***

That afternoon, I visited Dad at the hospital with Isabella. He was improving, though his left leg still dragged, and he needed an appointment with a neurologist before anyone would discuss going home.

We sat by the window while he complained about the bread served with lunch.

“It's dry as sawdust,” he said.

“You said that about every hospital meal,” I reminded him.

“Because every hospital meal is a personal insult.”

Isabella laughed.

Dad looked at her with mock seriousness. “When this is over, you owe me twenty-one years of washing dishes.”

“I'll do twenty-two,” she said.

The ease between them made me ache. My father had known her for only a few nights before she vanished, but they'd carried the weight of that secret through entire lives.

When it was time to leave, I kissed Dad's forehead.

“Call me if you need anything.”

“I need a decent cinnamon roll.”

“Anything realistic.”

He winked.

Isabella walked with me to the elevator. As the doors opened, she touched my arm.

“Rebecca, I need to thank you for telling Lorenzo I was here.”

“I wasn't going to let anyone make decisions about his life without him.”

“I wish I'd learned that twenty years ago.”

“Maybe you can learn it now.”

She nodded.

We reached the parking garage just after five. My car was two rows away. Lorenzo had promised to meet us for dinner after an appointment with his attorney.

A gray SUV rolled slowly past the elevators.

I barely noticed it until it stopped.

The passenger window lowered.

“Rebecca Hayes?” a man called.

I froze.

Isabella gripped my elbow.

The man lifted something dark in his hand.

“Get down!” Isabella shouted.

The first gunshot struck a concrete pillar.

I pulled her behind a parked delivery van. A car alarm began screaming. Glass shattered somewhere beyond us.

My phone nearly slipped from my fingers as I called 911.

“Hospital parking garage,” I told the operator. “Shots fired. Two women hiding near the west elevator. Gray SUV. I can see part of the plate.”

I read the letters twice while they were still visible.

The SUV reversed, tires screeching.

Then another car swept around the corner and stopped across the lane.

Lorenzo.

He was out before the engine died.

“Rebecca!”

“Stay back!” I yelled.

The man in the SUV fired again.

Lorenzo stumbled against his car. Blood bloomed across the sleeve of his coat.

My world narrowed to that red stain.

“Lorenzo!”

He reached inside his coat, then stopped. His eyes found mine behind the van.

I understood what he was deciding.

He could go after the shooter. He could answer a gun with a gun. He could become the man he knew how to be.

Instead, he moved toward us, taking cover behind the parked cars.

“Are you hurt?” he called.

“No! You're bleeding!”

“Stay down. The police are coming.”

The SUV shot toward the garage exit. Moments later, sirens filled the air.

I remember the police arriving in fragments. An officer kneeling beside Lorenzo. Someone asking me to repeat the license plate. Isabella sitting on the concrete with both hands over her ears, shaking so hard I thought she might faint.

I wanted to run after the SUV myself. I wanted to know why a man I'd never met had pointed a weapon at us. But the operator kept asking clear questions, and the questions gave me something to hold on to.

"Are you injured?"

"No."

"Can you move to a safer location?"

"Only if the officers say it's safe."

"Can you describe the passenger?"

I remembered a dark jacket and a cap pulled low, but I didn't invent a face I hadn't seen. The officer wrote down what I knew and what I couldn't know.

Isabella caught my sleeve. "It's happening again," she whispered. "The same thing they did to me."

I knelt beside her. "We're not going to disappear. Not this time. We have people here who can help us."

She nodded, though her eyes remained fixed on the garage entrance.

When the paramedics lifted Lorenzo onto a stretcher, he tried to sit up to find me. I walked beside him until a medic asked for space.

"Rebecca," he said.

"I'm right here."

"Don't follow anybody. Go with the officers."

"I'll do exactly what they tell me," I said, then leaned closer. "You do what the doctors tell you. For once."

He managed the ghost of a smile, and that expression carried me through the doors of the emergency department.

***

At the emergency department, a nurse cut away Lorenzo's sleeve. The bullet had struck his upper arm. He was losing blood but conscious, and the doctors were evaluating whether surgery was necessary.

I sat beside him, holding a clean towel against the wound until the nurse took over.

“You idiot,” I whispered.

“Usually people lead with thank you.”

“You drove into gunfire.”

“I was already turning into the garage when I heard the shots.”

“That's not better.”

He managed a crooked smile.

Then his face tightened with pain.

I reached for his uninjured hand.

“Don't leave me,” I said before I could stop myself.

His eyes softened.

“I'm here.”