THE MAFIA BOSS’S FIANCÉE TOLD ME TO TURN AWAY THE NURSE WHO CARED FOR HIS LATE WIFE—BUT WHEN HE SAW THE BLUE BOX IN HER HANDS, HIS ENTIRE EMPIRE CRUMBLED BEFORE DINNER

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“I told Vanessa not to leave that check,” Marco said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion.

Luca didn't lower his gun.

The two men stood ten feet apart, deadly barrels aligned, the ghost of Grace’s greenhouse surrounding them.

“You, Marco?” Luca asked, his voice shaking with a fury that ran deeper than bone. “Twelve years. You carried Grace’s casket.”

“And I should have been the one running this outfit ten years ago,” Marco sneered. “You went soft when she died. You spent eight years mourning a memory while the Bellinis expanded across four counties. When Alberto offered me forty percent of the docks and Vanessa as my partner, it was an easy choice.”

“Did you give Grace the poison?” Luca asked.

His tone had dropped into that terrifying, icy calm again.

Marco chuckled.

“Not directly. Vanessa gave the vial to Grace’s private physician. We paid him two hundred grand to slip it into her daily vitamin drip. Grace figured it out during the last month, but nobody believed a dying woman’s delusions. She gave that box to Margaret because she knew Margaret didn't answer to the syndicate.”

Marco shifted his weight, his eyes darting toward the stone planter where I was hiding.

“And now you brought your little maid out here to dig up bones. How tragic. Two more victims of the tragic Bellini-Moretti feud.”

Marco began to squeeze the trigger.

I didn't think.

I didn't calculate the odds.

All I knew was that if Luca fell, I was dead, Margaret was dead, and Grace’s murder would go unavenged.

I grabbed a heavy terracotta flower pot from the stone bench next to me and hurled it with all my strength straight at Marco’s head.

The pot shattered against his shoulder and ear.

*CRACK.*

Marco’s shot went wide, shattering a glass pane in the greenhouse roof.

The momentary distraction was all Luca needed.

Luca stepped in, deflected Marco’s gun arm with a brutal strike, and slammed him down against the stone floor.

The sound of bone cracking echoed through the conservatory.

Marco screamed in agony as his weapon skidded across the wet floorboards toward my feet.

Luca pinned Marco with one knee to the chest, pressing his forearm against Marco’s throat until the traitor’s face turned deep purple.

“Pick up the gun, Emma,” Luca ordered calmly without looking back.

My hands were shaking violently, but I bent down, picked up the cold steel pistol, and held it with both hands pointed at Marco.

Luca pulled the amber vial and Grace’s diaries from the safe, stuffing them into his coat.

Then he looked down at Marco.

“You are going to live until Friday morning, Marco,” Luca whispered. “Because on Friday, when the Five Families gather at the Drake Hotel to judge my honor... you are going to tell Alberto Bellini and his daughter exactly what Grace wrote in these books.”

Luca hauled Marco up by his collar as if he weighed nothing, securing his hands with zip-ties from his tactical belt.

He turned to me.

The rain was pouring through the hole in the shattered roof, soaking both of us.

Luca looked at the gun in my hands, then into my eyes.

“You saved my life, Emma.”

“We saved each other’s, Mr. Moretti.”

He reached out, his warm, rain-damp hand gently closing over mine to ease my fingers off the cold trigger.