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Chapter 3

Author: Shirley
I bit my lip and decided to try one last time. Clutching Lucas tightly, I ran toward the nightclub Dean owned at the end of the street.

The neon lights blurred in the night. The bouncers at the door recognized me but looked uneasy.

"The Boss just took a call, left in a hurry. Said it was urgent."

I froze in the cold, pouring rain. My last shred of hope vanished.

I stood there holding Lucas, my shadow a long, thin line under the streetlight.

Just then, a pair of headlights turned the corner.

It was a beat-up refrigerated truck used for delivering seafood, the fish market's number still painted on the side. It was heading to the city center docks for an overnight drop.

The driver, an old Mexican man, saw the state of the child in my arms. Without asking a single question, he jumped out and pulled open the passenger side door.

"Get in. Hurry."

The cab smelled of fish, and ice chests rattled in the back. I held Lucas against my chest, feeling his breaths grow shallower and shallower.

Forty minutes later, the truck screeched to a halt in front of the Family's private hospital.

I bolted from the truck with my son, but out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar black armored car parked nearby.

Dean was getting out of the back seat, a child in his arms. Hazel scrambled out right after him.

He gave an order to his bodyguards, then turned. His gaze met mine, and he saw the refrigerated truck as it pulled away.

He handed the child to Hazel, told her to go inside, and then strode toward me, his face a thundercloud.

"What the hell are you doing, hitching a ride in some unmarked piece of junk? You're a Capo's wife!"

"Look closer, Dean," I said, my voice trembling. "That was a fish truck. Not one of your armored cars."

His face grew colder.

"Unacceptable! You're a Capo's wife. You don't do things that look bad. How many eyes are on me? What will my men think? That my own wife is getting special treatment!"

"Special treatment?"

"Then whose son were you just carrying through the VIP entrance?"

"When you use a Family armored car to rush her son to the hospital, it's an 'emergency response.' But when I have to bum a ride in a fish truck to save my own son, it's 'special treatment' and 'breaking the rules'?"

"Your principles are awfully flexible when it suits you, aren't they, Dean?"

"You!" Dean was so choked with anger he couldn't speak.

"Hazel's situation is different! Her husband took a bullet for the Family! She's a widow raising a child alone. The Family is obligated to take care of them! That's the principle! You're different. You're my wife, you..."

"Enough!" I cut him off, my voice hoarse with exhaustion.

"You don't get to worry about me. Not since the day you started crossing my name off the list, not since you watched my hands rot in that laundry, and not since you refused to get a doctor for your own son!"

"You lost the right to tell me what to do a long time ago!"

Dean was thoroughly enraged. He took a step forward until his forehead was nearly touching mine.

"Olivia! You take that back! I am your husband, and I am Lucas's father! On those two counts alone, I have the right to tell you what to do!"

"Now you will go back to the apartment and you will stay there! And tomorrow morning, you're going to tell me exactly how you got that ride and how you got out of our territory!"

I looked at his flushed, furious face and let out a low laugh.

"Husband? Father? Ask yourself if you've earned either of those titles."

"You're the Capo of three boroughs, raking in blood money by the truckload, but the allowance you toss my way isn't even enough to match a dockworker's pay."

"Your newest soldiers have moved their families into secure apartments, while our son and I are still holed up in a crumbling slum with mold crawling up the walls."

"Lucas has burned with fever ten times, and every single time, the clinic 'had no beds.' I begged you just to get him in to see a Family doctor, but you were too afraid people would accuse you of playing favorites."
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  • The Capo’s Sacrificed Wife   Chapter 10

    At six in the morning, the rain stopped.Sofia, wrapped in a wool shawl, stood just inside the gate. Her eyes were red and swollen. She looked more haggard than the night before, but her emotions had stabilized.She looked at the man before her. He was a man in his prime, yet his salt-and-pepper hair was plastered to his forehead by the rain. His custom-made coat was so soaked it could be wrung out, and his lips were blue with cold, but his back was still ramrod straight.Beside him, Lucas was bundled tightly in the coat, his eyes half-open.Sofia let out a long sigh."I spoke with Lucas for a while last night.""I know that to save him, you've spent the last few years breaking every rule you once lived by. You've flown in the top brain specialists from Europe, diverted the scarcest black market drugs, even gone to war with other Families for medical equipment…"Dean raised his bloodshot eyes but said nothing."I'm old," Sofia said, her gaze drifting past him to the gray morning sky. "

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    Another All Souls' Day came and went.Dean took Lucas to the heavily guarded suburban compound to visit his mother-in-law.They waited a full twenty minutes before the massive gates slowly swung open.Dean stood on the rain-slicked porch, Lucas's hand in his.Sofia, wife of the late Don Salvatore and now the last remaining head of the Salvatore family, stood in the doorway.Her white hair was impeccably coiffed, and she wore a black cashmere cardigan.Her first instinct was to have him thrown out.But then her gaze fell on the gray streaking his hair, and then to the tall boy behind him with the vacant eyes.Her heart softened."Come in," she said, stepping aside."Ma," Dean said, his voice hoarse.The first thing Dean saw upon entering the hall was the black-and-white portrait of the old Don, Salvatore, hanging on the wall opposite the door. Beneath the frame were fresh white roses and an unlit cigar.A roar filled his head, and he was thrown back to an afternoon many years ago.Olivi

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    He drove without sleeping.The car sped down the highway at 140 miles per hour. His second-in-command, Tommy, drifted in and out of sleep in the passenger seat, but Dean's hands never left the wheel as he drove south from New York without a break.He didn't swerve for the rain, the roadblocks, or the wail of police sirens.His coat sleeves were stained with coffee and ash, his face was covered in stubble, his lips were cracked and bleeding, and his eyes were shot with red, but he didn't notice.Three days later, he finally drove into the ruin of the southern borough.The streets were littered with the charred skeletons of cars and walls pocked with bullet holes.The church sanctuary was nothing more than a half-standing doorframe. A statue of Jesus leaned against the rubble, its face spattered with dark, dried blood.In the backyard was a row of fresh graves, marked with crosses for the volunteers who had died in the conflict.One of the white wooden crosses was crudely carved with a

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    After that visit to the mold-infested slum, Dean was a changed man.He locked himself in his office, smoking one cigar after another, making call after call.The priest from the South Parish, the driver for the church's relief efforts, the Family's informants in the southern boroughs, even the federal agents on his payroll.But dozens of calls yielded the same answer: the area was a warzone. Two Dominican gangs had been in a bloody conflict over territory for three days and nights. There was no word from anyone, living or dead.His business fell into disarray. He signed the wrong accounts twice, gave the wrong time for a shipment.When Marcello, the Family's Consigliere, walked in, he found Dean sitting behind his desk, dark circles under his eyes.The old advisor closed the door behind him and sighed. "Dean, in this state, how do you expect to make a run for Underboss?"Dean didn't turn around, his voice rough as sandpaper. "I can't find her. There's no news. Not a word.""You know w

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    Gone?"What do you mean she's been gone? Where could she and the boy have gone?"The foreman's voice was raspy. "It was the day you took those widows to the compound... Your convoy had just cleared the neighborhood when a church bus pulled up. It took her and the boy away.""The boys only found out later. The missus signed on as a volunteer relief worker. She went to the most violent, lawless borough in the South.""Impossible... Why would she go to a place like that..."Dean muttered the words, then, as if struck by a whip, he turned and sprinted down the street.He tore to the gray, crumbling apartment building, took the stairs three at a time, and kicked open the door to their flat.The hinges screamed.Inside, the weather stripping on the windows was cracked, letting in a cold draft.A large patch of blackish-green mold crawled up the corner of the wall to the ceiling. The old radiator on the floor was rusted black and completely cold.The mattress sagged in the middle, covered by

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