Chapter 2

Marco worked fast.

When he returned with Elena Voss's file, the bourbon in my glass had already gone warm. The folder he placed on my desk was thin, only a few clinic records, property transfers, security stills, and payment trails, but I stared at it for a long moment before reaching for it.

Paper should not have felt that heavy.

"Your wrist opened again," Marco said.

I looked down and saw blood seeping through the cuff of my blouse. The recoil from the shot had torn the old scar along my right wrist, the one that had never healed properly no matter how many doctors my grandfather paid to pretend it would. I had not felt it while Matteo was in the room. Anger had a way of making pain wait its turn.

Marco took my hand and began cleaning the blood with the practiced patience of a man who had bandaged me through childhood, gun lessons, knife training, and too many mistakes I was too proud to admit were mistakes.

"It had been stable for months," he muttered. "Then Matteo Greco walks in and ruins that too."

"He didn't pull the trigger."

"No," Marco said, wrapping the gauze tighter than necessary. "He only made you want to."

I let him finish before opening the file.

The first page was dated five years ago.

That was the night Matteo met Elena.

He had been sent to Jersey to recover a stolen shipment and find out who was moving guns through our port without permission. It was meant to be a clean job, the kind Matteo usually finished before dinner. Instead, he vanished for two days.

We found him in an abandoned meatpacking plant near Newark, tied to a chair, drugged, and beaten until even Marco stopped speaking when he saw him. The men holding him had not killed him because they knew exactly what he was worth. A Caruso enforcer was more valuable alive, at least until he gave them routes, names, and accounts.

Elena had been there too.

According to the file, she was a trauma nurse attached to a black-market clinic that stitched up men who could not risk hospitals. Her official story was simple enough: she treated whoever was brought to her and asked no questions. Clean, useful, forgettable.

Too clean.

I turned the page.

After that night, Matteo kept seeing her.

Not often enough to make noise, but often enough to leave a trail if someone knew where to look. A private clinic in Jersey City. Cash payments routed through two shell companies. A security still from a Red Hook garage, blurred but clear enough to show Matteo stepping out of a black SUV while Elena waited inside the doorway.

Then I saw the address.

My hand stopped.

The Red Hook house was mine.

My grandfather had bought it through a clean company years ago, back when he still believed I might one day marry quietly enough to keep the captains from turning my bed into a political battlefield. It sat near the water, private and fortified, with a garage entrance, reinforced windows, and a panic room beneath the kitchen.

He once told me it would make a good home for me and the man I chose.

Matteo had put Elena there.

I read the line again, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less insulting. They did not.

"All this time," I said, "he was careful with her."

Marco's voice turned cold. "He was careless with you."

Before I could answer, my phone rang.

Matteo.

I looked at the name on the screen for a few seconds before picking up.

"Vivian," he said. His voice was low and hoarse, probably from pain. "Call your men off."

I leaned back in my chair.

"Is that why you called?"

"Elena needs a doctor."

"She had one. You took him from my clinic."

There was a pause.

Then he said, softer this time, "Please."

I almost laughed.

Matteo Greco had never begged when rival crews broke his ribs. He had never begged when men dragged him into basements and tortured him for Caruso routes. He had never begged even when he was bleeding out in my arms.

But for Elena Voss, he had learned the word easily.

"Do you remember the first time you asked me for something?" I asked.

The line went quiet.

"I do," I said. "You were in that fight pit under Brooklyn. They had thrown you against a man twice your size, and after he broke your ribs, you still dragged yourself across the floor and caught the hem of my dress."

"Vivian."

"You looked up at me with blood all over your mouth and told me to choose you."

His breathing changed.

For a moment, the office disappeared.

I was twelve again, standing beside my grandfather in that basement beneath Brooklyn. The air smelled of sweat, cheap liquor, and old blood. Men were shouting around the ring, laughing because they thought the skinny boy on the floor was done.

He was not.

He had one eye swollen shut, his lip split down the middle, and two fingers bent in a way fingers should not bend. Every time he moved, blood slipped from his mouth onto the concrete. Still, he dragged himself toward me as if he had already decided that dying was less frightening than being left behind.

When he reached my shoes, he grabbed the hem of my dress with broken fingers.

"Choose me," he said.

His voice was barely there, but I heard every word.

"Give me a place, and I'll be useful."