Italian marble floors echo with each footstep, and crystal chandeliers cast prismatic light across Persian rugs.
Everything perfect, everything expensive, everything cold.
My study is the only room that feels genuinely lived in.
Dark wood paneling lines the walls, broken up by floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a collection of photographs I allow no one else to see.
I pour myself three fingers of Macallan 25 and settle behind the mahogany desk that once belonged to Lucky Luciano himself.
The Conti files are exactly where I left them, spread across the desk’s surface.
Three years of surveillance photos, financial records, medical reports, and personal correspondence.
Everything I could gather about the man who killed Marco and his veterinarian daughter who’s about to pay for his sins.
But as I flip through Giuliana’s photographs—surveillance shots of her at work, candid images of her with friends, professional headshots from her clinic’s website—something bothers me.
The woman in these pictures looks capable, confident, completely in control of her life.
Nothing like someone who would crumble under pressure.
I pull out a magnifying glass and study the most recent surveillance photo, taken just last week outside her clinic.
She’s wearing blue scrubs with her hair pulled back in a loose braid.
Her posture speaks of someone comfortable with authority.
Her smile, as she talks to the elderly woman walking a small dog, is genuine but guarded.
It’s the expression of someone who’s learned not to trust too easily.
The contradiction intrigues me more than it should.
Beautiful women are common enough in my world, and intelligent ones aren’t particularly rare either.
But genuine courage—the kind that makes someone stand between a loaded gun and their father despite knowing it’s futile—that’s something else entirely.
I reach for my phone and dial Danny’s number.
He answers on the first ring. “Yeah, boss?”
“Add psychiatric evaluation to the background check,” I tell him, examining a picture of Giuliana walking with a blonde woman—her best friend Katie Carmichael. “I want to know if she’s ever been treated for trauma, depression, anything that might explain her behavioral patterns.”
“Will do.” A pause. “Anything specific you’re looking for?’
I study the photograph again, noting the way her dark eyes seem to look directly at the camera despite not knowing she was being watched. “I want to know why she’s not afraid of me.”
After ending the call, I lean back in my chair and allow myself a moment of honest reflection.
Three years of planning have led to tonight’s confrontation, and every detail unfolded exactly as planned.
But Giuliana Conti’s reaction stumps me.
Her composure, her defiance, her protective instincts toward a father who clearly doesn’t deserve them introduces variables I hadn’t accounted for.
Variables can be dangerous in my line of work.
They can also be…interesting.
