Chapter 2 - The Lion’s Garden
I didn't sleep.
I spent the entire night sitting on the cracked vinyl linoleum of my studio kitchen, watching the numbers on my banking screen as if expecting them to vanish like fairy dust. At 6:00 AM, my mother’s oncologist called from St. Jude’s.
“Lily? I don’t know what kind of clerical miracle just happened, but your mother’s account has been settled in full with a private donor wire from an offshore escrow. Her first round of targeted immunotherapy is scheduled for nine this morning.”
I dropped the phone on the mattress and wept until my ribs ached.
The debt was gone. Just like that. The suffocating boulder that had been crushing my chest for fourteen months had been pulverized by a single keystroke from a man whose name made hardened restaurant managers turn white.
By 6:30 PM, I stood before the small medicine cabinet mirror, staring at my reflection.
I didn't own evening gowns. I owned two pairs of jeans, three work uniforms, and a simple emerald-green silk dress I had bought at a thrift store three years ago for my college graduation—an event I had skipped to work a double shift at the bakery. I pinned my dark hair up with two plain brass bobby pins, put on flat leather shoes because my swollen ankle still throbbed, and stepped out into the damp autumn evening.
A sleek black Maybach was already idling at the curb outside my apartment building, its tinted windows reflecting the flickering streetlamps of the South End.
The driver, an older man with immaculate white gloves and an earbud tucked into his collar, stepped out, opened the rear door, and bowed his head slightly. “Miss Alvarez. Mr. Constantino is waiting.”
We drove north, leaving the cracked asphalt and abandoned warehouses of my neighborhood behind, crossing the bridge into the wooded, fortified hills of Lake Forest.
The Constantino estate did not look like a mobster’s compound. There were no gaudy statues, no neon fountains, no armada of chrome sports cars. It was a sprawling, centuries-old stone manor built of gray limestone, surrounded by towering black walnut trees and manicured boxwood hedges. Wrought-iron gates parted silently as we approached, and armed sentries stationed at the stone guardhouse nodded once as the Maybach glided past.
The interior was silent, smelling of aged beeswax, dried lavender, and old leather-bound books.
Salvatore was waiting for me on the glass-enclosed rear terrace overlooking a sunken stone garden filled with white hydrangeas. He had changed into a dark navy cashmere sweater and charcoal trousers, looking less like a syndicate boss and more like a retired European professor of architecture.
When he heard my footsteps, he rose immediately.
His eyes swept over me—noting the thrifted green dress, the lack of makeup, the stubborn set of my chin. A faint, genuine smile touched the corners of his lips.
“You came,” he said.
“You bought my mother’s life, Mr. Constantino,” I replied, stopping five paces away from the set table. “Coming to dinner was the least I could do before asking you what you really want.”
“What I want,” he said, pulling out a wrought-iron chair cushioned in ivory velvet, “is for you to sit down, eat a meal you didn't have to carry on a tray, and allow me to introduce myself properly.”
I sat. The table was set with rustic earthenware plates, fresh crusty sourdough, olive oil from Sicily, and a simple bowl of handmade pappardelle with braised wild boar. There were no waiters. No armed guards hovering in the corners. Just the two of us, separated by candlelight and a garden shrouded in evening mist.
“You’re fifty-six,” I said abruptly, needing to pierce the surreal calm of the room.
He raised an eyebrow, pouring two glasses of deep crimson Barolo. “Fifty-eight, actually. Does that offend you?”
“People are saying things,” I said, looking down at the wine. “The kitchen staff at Giovanni’s... the rumors started before my shift ended. They said the Don of Chicago has lost his mind. They said you’re chasing a girl half your age because of some late-life crisis.”
Salvatore let out a low, rich chuckle that rumbled through the quiet terrace. It was a sound devoid of mockery, warm and grounded.
“Let them talk, Lily. Men in my position are surrounded by two kinds of people: those who want to shoot us, and those who want to flatter us into giving them our empire. Neither group ever tells the truth. The opinion of the city has not mattered to me since 1994.”
He set his fork down and leaned his forearms against the table, his slate-gray eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made the hair on my arms stand up.
“Look at this photograph,” he said, sliding a small, silver-framed picture across the linen.
I looked down.
The photograph was old, faded at the edges. It showed a young woman sitting in a garden, holding a bundle of white flowers. She was beautiful—dark chestnut hair, fierce hazel eyes, and a small, distinct birthmark shaped like a crescent moon right along the line of her left collarbone.
I froze. My breath caught in my throat.
May you like
I reached up with trembling fingers, my hand instinctively touching the exact same crescent-shaped birthmark nestled against my own collarbone.
“Her name was Rosa,” Salvatore murmured, his voice dropping into a register of profound, ancient reverence. “She was my wife. And thirty years ago, before I ever pulled a trigger or took an oath, she was the only reason I wanted to be a good man.”
