Christ. I pause at my office window, watching the city move as if nothing is wrong. “How extensive?”
“Extensive enough.” The weight in that single word tells me everything I need to know. “We need her home before this hits. Once it’s public, every reporter in the city will be hunting for the DeLuca princess.”
If he’s saying that, that means… “Understood. Twenty minutes.”
The line goes dead, and I’m left staring at my reflection in the window—a thirty-five-year-old man who’s built an empire through careful planning and a long-term vision, now facing a crisis that could unravel years of work in a matter of hours.
I grab my coat and head for the elevator, my mind already shifting into crisis mode.
The Giuseppe files.
After all these years, someone finally managed to get their hands on the federal evidence that was supposed to be buried so deep it would never see daylight.
The question isn’t just who had access—it’s who had the balls to use it and why they chose now.
The BMW starts with a quiet purr, and I pull into Manhattan traffic that’s already thickening with the afternoon rush.
My phone buzzes with incoming messages—probably my lieutenants checking in, maybe other family heads who’ve heard rumors.
I ignore them all.
Right now, the only thing that matters is getting to Bianca before the story breaks and the media circus begins.
As I navigate through the congested streets, my mind races through the immediate implications.
Giuseppe’s federal files hitting the front pages will bring heat we haven’t seen in years.
Every agency that worked those cases will be under pressure to justify why investigations were closed.
Every family that’s maintained the careful balance of power in New York will be reassessing their positions, looking for opportunities in the chaos.
I turn onto Broadway, the familiar weight of my gun against my ribs a reminder that in our world, protection is always a matter of life and death.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m racing through traffic to protect the one person who’s become both my greatest strength and my most dangerous weakness.
Bianca DeLuca has been a problem for me since her sixteenth birthday.
Not because she’s done anything wrong, but because watching her grow from the traumatized child we rescued from Mario’s warehouse into the brilliant, fierce young woman she’s become has been like watching a natural disaster in slow motion—beautiful, inevitable, and absolutely destructive to any peace of mind I might have once possessed.
At twelve, she was all fragile bones and haunted eyes, clinging to Matteo like he was the only solid thing in a world that had tried to kill her.
I was just another ally then, someone who’d helped coordinate the rescue and earned a place at the family table through loyalty and value.
She barely looked at me except to whisper polite thank yous when I brought her books or sat quietly while she recovered from nightmares.
By sixteen, everything had changed.
The haunted child had transformed into someone who could walk into a room and command attention without saying a word.
Those steel-blue eyes that once looked through everything with traumatized distance now saw everything—and everyone—with an intelligence that was both thrilling and terrifying.
The way she’d started looking at me during family dinners, the careful attention she paid when I spoke, the subtle shift in her body language when I entered a room.
It was impossible to ignore and equally impossible to acknowledge.
Because I’m thirty-five years old and she’s Matteo’s daughter, and there are lines that can’t be crossed no matter how much chemistry crackles between us during those moments when our eyes meet across a crowded room.
But fuck, she makes it difficult.
