Chapter 2 - The Sound in the Kitchen
The marble floor of the grand foyer felt unusually cold beneath Dominic Russo’s boots as he tracked the sound toward the rear of the mansion. Every step was measured, silent, the instinctive movement of a man who had survived a dozen assassination attempts by trusting the paranoid rhythm of his own heartbeat. His hand remained hooked near his holster, fingers brushing the checkered grip of his Sig Sauer.
He expected an enemy. He expected a breach. He expected a message carved in blood left by surviving remnants of the Costa or Lupertazzi syndicates who thought they could test the waters of his territory while he was away in Chicago.
Instead, he rounded the corner into the sprawling, professional-grade kitchen and stopped dead in his tracks.
The room smelled of melted butter, vanilla, and roasted apples—a scent that hadn't existed in this mausoleum of a home since the day Isabella died. Sunlight poured through the massive floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the private stretch of Long Island Sound, turning the dust motes in the air into a shimmering golden haze.
At the marble island in the center of the kitchen stood a young woman with her dark hair tied back in a messy, careless bun, a flour-dusted apron tied over a simple blue sweater. She was holding a wooden spoon like a microphone, belting out an absurdly theatrical, off-key verse of an old Italian nursery rhyme.
Surrounding her were his daughters.
Lucia, Valentina, and Mia—four-year-old triplets who hadn't spoken a single word, hadn't cracked a single smile, and hadn't looked at him with anything other than hollow, haunted eyes for fourteen agonizing months—were standing on wooden barstools, flour smeared across their cheeks, clutching handfuls of dough, laughing so hard they were gasping for air.
“And then the frog said ribbit-ribbit to the king!” the young woman shouted playfully, exaggerating her gestures with comic gravity.
Mia let out a high-pitched giggle that sounded like chimes in the wind. Valentina clapped her flour-covered hands together, her dark eyes sparkling with a joy Dominic thought had been buried forever in a Queens cemetery. Even Lucia—the serious, protective little general who always stood guard like a sentinel—was grinning from ear to ear, her shoulders shaking with silent, bubbling mirth.
Dominic’s breath hitched in his throat.
For a fraction of a second, the iron armor around his chest cracked. He saw Isabella in the curve of Lucia’s smile. He saw the warmth of a normal life—a life he had traded away for blood, guns, and gold—teasing him from across the room.
Then, the cold, brutal paranoia of the underworld rushed back to fill the void.
Who is she?
His mind raced through every threat vector. An undercover federal agent? A plant by a rival family? A professional infiltrator sent to get close to his children? No one—absolutely no one—got this close to his daughters without passing through three layers of background checks, armed guards, and Dominic’s own personal vetting process. Rosa had overstepped. Rosa had brought a stranger into his home, into the inner sanctuary where his bloodline slept.
May you like
Dominic’s fingers tightened on the grip of his gun. The protective father vanished instantly, replaced by the apex predator of the New York underworld.
“What the hell is going on here?”
