“Forty-eight hours,” he says quietly, almost gently, which somehow makes it worse. “Make your decision. Everything else depends on that.”
Then he’s gone too, his footsteps echoing away into nothing, leaving me alone in that circle of harsh light with my father’s blood still drying on the concrete and the taste of my own blood in my mouth.
I don’t know how long I lay there before I can finally drag myself to my feet and stagger to my car.
Every breath hurts.
Every movement is agony.
But none of it compares to the knowledge that my father is somewhere in Luca Marchetti’s control, and I’m powerless to save him.
As I drive away from the warehouse, I can feel eyes watching from the darkness.
Luca’s people, making sure I understand exactly how trapped I am.
Forty-eight hours to choose between my freedom and my father’s life.
Forty-eight hours to decide if I marry a monster.
2
LUCA
I watch Giuliana Conti stumble to her car through the scope of my binoculars, one hand clutching her ribs where Dimitri kicked her.
She’s moving like a wounded animal—hunched, desperate, and broken.
Soot stains her dark hair.
Her taillights disappear into the maze of Chicago’s industrial district, weaving slightly as if she can barely focus on driving.
Three years, two months, and sixteen days of planning have led to this moment, and everything has unfolded exactly as I calculated.
Almost everything.
“Boss,” Danny says from beside me, his voice disapproving. “Dimitri didn’t need to hit her that hard. She wasn’t going to get past him.”
I lower the binoculars and turn to face my lieutenant.
Danny Grasso is built like a heavyweight boxer who decided to become an accountant.
His muscular frame barely fits in his suits.
His green eyes, kind despite everything he’s seen and done in my service, reflect the warehouse’s fluorescent lighting as he studies my expression.
I lower my binoculars and slide them into my jacket pocket. “She needed to understand the reality of her situation. Words weren’t sufficient,” I say.
I expected Antonio Conti’s daughter to collapse the moment she saw her father beaten and bound.
I expected tears, hysteria, desperate begging that would make her eventual submission all the more satisfying.
Instead, she threw herself at Dimitri twice—a woman half his size attacking a trained enforcer with nothing but desperation and rage.
Even after he knocked her down, split her lip, and probably cracked her ribs, she kept trying to crawl toward her father.
The violence was necessary.
She needed to learn that defiance has consequences, that her heroic impulses will only earn her pain.
