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Matteo chuckles, puffing his chest out like a rooster, oblivious to the fact that he is standing three inches from his own open grave.

"A magnificent piece of flesh, Don," Matteo boasts, licking his lips as he watches Iris toss her head back, her hips rolling to a heavy drop in the music. "Red hair, pale skin, that tight little waist. A woman built like that shouldn't be dancing alone in the pit. If she belongs to you, maybe we can negotiate a trade for the next shipment from Reggio. My bed is always open for an Irish whore."

The word "whore" barely clears his teeth before Sofia moves.

A black flash of fury launches from beneath my boots. Sofia hits Matteo at waist height, two hundred pounds of trained Doberman force slamming him backward over the brass railing of the VIP platform.

Matteo screams as he crashes onto the concrete below, his glass shattering into a thousand pieces against his face.

Before he can roll over, before his two bodyguards near the bar can even draw their weapons, Enzo and Tony move with surgical brutality. Two silenced cracks cough through the music: one bullet through the right knee of each bodyguard, sending both men crashing to the floor in puddles of their own blood.

The music cuts out with a violent, screeching scratch of vinyl as the DJ hits the master kill switch.

The dance floor freezes.

Fifty patrons scramble toward the exits in screaming panic, stumbling over tables and kicking through broken glassware. Within ten seconds, the entire club is dead silent, save for the wet, sobbing wheezes of Matteo Santoro clawing at the concrete.

Iris stops in the middle of the empty dance floor, her chest heaving under the black lace dress, her wild red hair framing her flushed, sweaty face. She tilts her head, her heightened senses instantly reading the room: the smell of spilled blood, the metallic scent of drawn firearms, and Sofia's low, rumbling growl pinned over a man's throat.

"Romeo?" Iris's voice calls out, clear and steady across the empty room, devoid of fear.

I don't answer right away.

I pick up my Kimber from the table, check the chamber with a crisp metallic slide, and step down from the VIP platform onto the dance floor.

My footsteps are slow and measured, echoing against the damp walls. I stop right in front of Matteo, who is pinned to the floor with Sofia's front paws on his chest, her bared fangs hovering two inches from his nose. His face is sliced open from the broken glass, blood pooling beneath his velvet collar.

"You spoke to me about trade, Matteo," I murmur, crouching down beside his head until the barrel of my forty-five rests flat against his temple.

Matteo shakes uncontrollably, snot and tears mixing with the blood on his cheeks. "D-Don Messina... forgive me... I didn't know... I swear to the Virgin Mary, I didn't know she was yours!"

"She's my wife," I whisper into his ear, clicking the hammer back with a hollow, terrifying snap. "She is Donna Messina. And you called her a whore in my house."

"Please!" he sobs, clutching his broken ribs. "Please, Don!"

I look up across the dance floor at Iris. She has walked toward us, Sofia's low growl guiding her steps until she stops three feet away, her arms crossed over her chest, the heavy emerald ring glinting under the club's red emergency lights.

"What did he say, Romeo?" Iris asks in a thick Irish accent, her voice dropping into that chilling, aristocratic calmness she wore at Castelmola.

"He asked if he could buy you for the night, Kitten," I reply, my thumb resting on the trigger. "He offered to trade port shipments to put you in his bed."

Iris's eyebrows lift slightly. She steps closer, the sharp tip of her stiletto resting directly on the back of Matteo's outstretched hand, pressing down until the thin bones in his fingers crunch under her weight.

Matteo shrieks in agony.

"The next time you look at a woman in a room, Calabrian," Iris says softly, her voice sweet as cyanide, "make sure she isn't the one holding the leash of the monster who owns the city."

She lifts her heel off his hand and turns toward the VIP stairs.

"Shoot his hands off, Romeo," she says over her shoulder, her hips swaying in that black lace dress as she climbs the platform. "Then come up here and finish what you started on that dance floor."

A dark, feral roar of laughter rips through my chest.

I pull the trigger twice. Two heavy hollow-point rounds blow clean through Matteo's palms, pinning his hands to the concrete in a shower of gore and screams that echo into the street above.

"Enzo, clean this pig up and dump him on his brother's doorstep in Reggio," I command, tossing the hot Kimber onto the table as I stride up the stairs. "Lock the doors. No one enters this club until tomorrow noon."

"Yes, Don," Enzo replies with a grin, dragging Matteo by his collar toward the rear exits.