But the envelope is here. At a location purchased through three ghost shells less than twelve hours ago. A location no Bellanti surveillance team should know exists.
Either they have a long lens and limitless patience, tracking every vehicle that leaves our compound and following it to every destination. Or they have someone close enough to know which shell company signed the deed at three in the morning.
I don't know which answer destroys me more.
I turn around. Sienna is watching me from behind Santi's massive frame, her amber eyes wide with fear, sensing the absolute, murderous shift in my demeanor.
"What is it?" she whispers.
I walk to her, wrapping my arm around her waist, pulling her flush against my side. I look at Santi. My brother is staring at my clenched fist, his dark eyes calculating, already running scenarios behind the patient stillness of his face.
"Get her back to the SUV," I order, my voice stripped of all humanity. It is the voice of the Don. The voice of the reaper. "Lock the brownstone down. Full security audit. Every camera feed from the last seventy-two hours pulled and reviewed frame by frame. Every shell company transaction traced for access leaks. I want to know how they found this building."
"External or internal?" Santi asks, his voice quiet and deliberate. It is the right question. It is the question that will determine whether this war is fought on the streets or inside my own walls.
"That's what we're going to find out," I say.
Santi nods once, his jaw set like granite.
I look down at Sienna. I trace the line of her jaw, feeling her rapid pulse beneath my fingers. I just found my soul, and now I have to drown it in blood to keep her safe.
"They're watching us," I tell her, my voice dropping to a low, lethal frequency. "They know your face. They know where you stand when you step out of the vehicle. And they knew about this building before the sun came up."
She inhales a jagged breath. She looks at the crushed photo in my hand.
"I am going to find them," I vow, my eyes burning with a cold, focused rage that has replaced the heat of the last twelve hours. "Whether they're sitting in a van across the street or sitting atmy own table—I will find them. And when I do, I will make their death a legend in this city."
Sienna doesn't flinch. She doesn't pull away. She squares her shoulders beneath the green wool coat and takes my hand—the one not crushing the photograph—and laces her fingers through mine.
"Then find them," she says, her voice steady. "But you come back to me, Dominic. Every night. You come back to our bed."
The vise around my chest loosens a fraction. I press my mouth to her forehead, hard and brief.
"Every night," I promise.
I guide her back to the SUV, my hand firm at the small of her back. When we reach the vehicle, I open the armored door and lift her in—my hands at her waist, holding her a beat longer than necessary, my thumb pressing once against her hip through the wool before I close the door. A seal. An anchor.Mine, inside. Threats, outside.I remain standing for a moment in the cobblestone alley, the cold Chicago wind whipping at my coat. I look at the reinforced greenhouse—the fortress I built for her hands, for her art, for the legacy the Bellantis tried to burn.
And I look at the black envelope on the ground.
The war in Chicago hasn't even begun. It's just gotten closer than I ever imagined it could. And I will burn down the whole fucking city, and everyone in it, to make sure the fire never touches her.
Epilogue
SIENNA
The heavy,reinforced deadbolt on the front door of the shop engages with a solid, echoing thud. It is a sound I should resent, a daily reminder that my life is no longer entirely my own. But as I stand in the center of the sprawling, glass-and-steel workspace, the sunlight catching the thick, bulletproof panes of the front windows, the sound of that lock doesn't feel like a cage. It feels like an anchor.
Dominic bought this building off the books, funneling the transaction through three blind trusts just so my name wouldn't appear on a single public registry. He gutted the interior, reinforcing the walls with Kevlar and installing a security system that connects directly to Santi’s hub. The air smells of wet earth, crushed eucalyptus, and the heavy, sweet scent of coral peonies. He filled the massive walk-in cooler with them before I even stepped foot inside.
He didn't just replace the flower shop the Bellantis burned to the ground. He built me a fortress.
I drag a pair of heavy pruning shears through the thick stem of a hydrangea, the snap loud in the quiet shop. My hands are dirty,soil under my fingernails, my copper curls piled haphazardly on top of my head and secured with a wooden dowel. I am exhausted, my muscles aching with a deep, persistent soreness from the way Dominic claimed me in his massive bed just hours ago. A quiet thrum of heat still sits low in my belly, a physical ache from his obsession.
The burner phone in the pocket of my canvas apron vibrates against my hip.
I set the shears down, wiping my damp hands on a towel. The phone is a heavy, encrypted brick Dominic placed in my palms the night he revealed his deepest secret—the facts regarding his sister, concerning the snare he constructed and never disclosed to her. The screen illuminates with a single, unsaved number. I know the area code. Pine Valley.
I swipe my thumb across the glass and press it to my ear. "Hello?"
