Chapter 6
The armored Suburban rolled through the estate’s security gates at twenty past one in the morning.
I was waiting in the great hall, wrapped in a heavy charcoal cashmere robe Dominic had given me from his own closet. The fabric swallowed my frame, smelling of his cedarwood cologne, but I didn't care. I leaned on the back of a mahogany settee, my heart pounding against my ribs like a caged animal.
When the front doors burst open, Daniel walked in first, his suit spattered with rain and grime.
Behind him, wrapped in an oversized tactical jacket and shaking uncontrollably, was my brother.
"Leo!"
The cry tore out of my throat. Forgetting the agony in my ankle entirely, I took two stumbling steps forward. The pain roared up my leg, and my knee buckled, but Dominic’s arm was already there, catching me around the waist before I hit the marble.
"Careful," he murmured against my ear.
Leo looked up. His face was bruised—a dark purple swelling closed over his left eye—and his lip was split, but he was alive. He saw me, let out a ragged sob, and threw his arms around my neck, burying his face in my shoulder.
"Emma... God, Emma, I’m sorry," Leo wept, his entire body trembling against mine. "I’m so sorry. I didn't know they were going to do this. I thought Marcus was helping me. I didn't know—"
"Shh. It’s okay. You're okay," I whispered fiercely, pressing kisses into his messy hair, holding him as tight as my arms could manage. "You're safe now. Leo, look at me. You're safe."
Daniel stepped forward, holding a manila envelope sealed in a clear plastic evidence bag. He handed it directly to Dominic.
"Found it stapled to his shirt collar, Boss," Daniel said quietly. "No fingerprints on the exterior. High-grade bond paper."
Dominic took the bag. He didn't open it immediately. He looked at Leo, his gaze cold, assessing, calculating.
"Daniel, take the boy to the east wing," Dominic ordered. "Get him food. Have Russo look at that eye. Put two guards outside his door. Nobody goes in, nobody goes out."
"No, wait," I said, panic flaring in my chest. "He stays with me."
Dominic looked down at me, his expression unyielding. "He’s safe, Emma. But we have business to discuss. In private."
Leo looked terrified of Dominic, shrinking back instinctively from the aura of absolute authority radiating off the mafia boss. "Emma? Who is he?"
"Go with Daniel, Leo," I told him, squeezing his hand one last time. "Trust me. He’s keeping us alive."
Daniel led my brother away down the hallway. Once their footsteps faded into the distance, Dominic turned and walked toward his private study.
"Come," he said.
I limped behind him, my heel burning with every step, but I refused to let him carry me this time. I needed my dignity. I needed answers.
Dominic walked behind his massive mahogany desk, set the plastic bag down, and sliced it open with an antique silver letter opener. He extracted the envelope using the tip of the blade, slid the card out, and turned it over.
On the thick cream cardstock was a single sentence written in elegant, looping black calligraphy:
*The dancer who vanished from Michigan Avenue has finally returned to the stage. Tell Dominic the debt isn't Marcus's. It's hers.*
Beneath the writing was a small, wax seal stamped into the paper.
A silver falcon clutching a broken dagger.
My breath caught. The room began to spin.
"You recognize that crest," Dominic said. It wasn't a question. It was a statement of fact.
He was standing perfectly still behind the desk, watching the color drain completely from my face.
"Emma," Dominic said, his voice dropping into that terrifyingly calm register again. "You told me your father was an accountant who went broke paying your medical bills."
I swallowed. The lump in my throat felt like broken glass. "He was."
"Then why," Dominic whispered, taking a step around the desk, "is the personal seal of Antonio Falcone stamped on a note addressed to you?"
The name hung in the air like a detonation.
Antonio Falcone.
The former head of the Chicago syndicate. The man who had ruled the city with an iron fist until five years ago, when he was supposedly betrayed and assassinated in his lakefront mansion—the very assassination that paved the way for Dominic’s father to seize absolute control of the territory.
"He wasn't my father," I whispered, tears blurring my vision.
Dominic stopped three feet from me. "Then who was he?"
"He was my grandfather."
Dominic’s eyes widened slightly—the closest he had ever come to showing true shock.
"My mother was his youngest daughter," I said, my voice cracking under the weight of the lie I had lived for five years. "She ran away when she was eighteen. She hated everything he stood for. She married an honest man—an accountant named David Vance. She changed our names. She cut all ties. When Falcone was murdered five years ago, my mother had a stroke and died two weeks later."
I looked up at Dominic, begging him to understand with my eyes.
"I never took a dime of his money," I sobbed. "I never saw him. I never wanted anything to do with the mob, or the syndicates, or the blood. I just wanted to dance! But when my father died and Leo started gambling, the old Falcone lieutenants found out where we were. They used Marcus. They orchestrated Leo’s debt. They wanted to plant Falcone’s bloodline inside your house to take you down from within!"
Dominic didn't speak. He stared at me, his mind racing through every move on the board, recalculating five years of history in ten seconds.
"I didn't know," I pleaded, reaching out toward him, though I didn't dare touch his sleeve. "I swear to you, Dominic! I didn't know Marcus was working for the Falcone remnants! I thought he was just a crooked house manager! If I wanted to hurt you, I could have put poison in your wine six months ago! I could have opened the front doors in the middle of the night!"
Dominic looked down at the note on the desk.
*Tell Dominic the debt isn't Marcus's. It's hers.*
He reached out, took the paper, and held it over the crystal ashtray on his desk. He pulled a gold lighter from his pocket, flicked the flint, and touched the blue flame to the corner of the cardstock.
We both watched in silence as the cream paper curled, blackened, and turned into gray ash.
"They don't want to kill you, Emma," Dominic said softly, his voice dangerously low.
"Then what do they want?"
Dominic looked up from the ashes, his black eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that stole the breath straight out of my lungs.
May you like
"They want you on the throne," Dominic said. "They want the Falcone name back on the Chicago seat. And they’re going to burn this entire city to the ground to put you there."
***
