Siena POV

A heavy knock echoed through the penthouse.

Leonardo cursed under his breath. He rose, giving the lapels of his tailored suit jacket a sharp, definitive tug.

Francesca stayed on the sofa, crossing her long legs and making a slow, deliberate show of smoothing the wrinkles from her silk dress.

Leonardo opened the heavy oak door.

Three men in dark gray jumpsuits stood in the hallway. They were the syndicate's discreet maintenance crew, the unseen hands that handled the messes the police were never allowed to see.

The head of the crew took his hat off, his knuckles white where he wrung the brim, his gaze fixed on the floor in front of the Don's expensive shoes.

"Sorry to interrupt, Boss," the man said. "We are checking all the units in Building 10. There is a serious issue with the water supply."

Leonardo crossed his arms. "Fix it quietly. Why are you bothering me?"

The man swallowed hard. "It is a biological contamination, Boss. The filters are clogged. We need to check the rooftop tank. Did any of the men lose a dog? A large pet?"

Francesca let out a bright, melodic laugh from the living room.

"We lost a person," she called out. "A living, breathing person."

The three maintenance men froze, their faces becoming slack and pale. They stared at the floor. In our world, hearing a joke like that meant you might not live to see tomorrow.

Leonardo shot a warning glare over his shoulder before turning back to the men.

"Get to the roof," Leonardo ordered. "Clean the tank. If you whisper a single word of what you find up there to another soul, I will have your families burying you in three separate caskets."

The men nodded in a flurry of jerky movements and rushed toward the stairwell.

Leonardo closed the door and locked the deadbolt. He walked back to the living room and poured himself a glass of amber whiskey.

"You need to watch your mouth, Francesca," he said, his tone sharp, yet underscored with a note of undeniable fondness.

Francesca pouted. She walked over and wrapped her arms around his waist.

"I'm just tired of hiding," she whispered. "She has been gone for three days. Can we just say she ran away?"

Leonardo took a sip of his drink. "I hope she dies out there in the streets."

Francesca rested her chin on his chest. "Do you think you were too hard on her at the pool? You were so angry, Leo. It scared me."

Leonardo set his glass down, cupping her face with his large hands.

"She pushed you," he said firmly. "You could have drowned. She is a vicious, jealous woman. She deserved the wrath of this Family. I am the Don. I protect what is mine."

Weightless and unseen, I hovered inches from his face. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to tear his eyes out.

I did not push her.

Francesca was a cartel runaway, a girl who grew up swimming in the ocean. She had faked the entire thing to trigger his violent temper.

I had tried to pull her out. But Leonardo had shoved me so hard my knees left skin and blood on the flagstones.

He had stood over me while I bled, his voice a low command for me to apologize to his mistress in front of the estate guards.

I refused. I had my pride. I was a mafia daughter before I was his wife.

And my refusal sealed my death warrant.

He dragged me to the roof to break my pride, but he ended up breaking my body instead.

The burner phone on the table rang again.

Leonardo picked it up. "Yeah?"

It was the head of the maintenance crew. His voice was shaking so badly the words barely made sense.

"Boss. Boss, please. We opened the tank."

Leonardo frowned. "What is it? Just clean it out."

"It's a body, Boss," the man sobbed. "It's a woman. She is completely bloated. Boss... It's your wife. It's Siena."

Leonardo stopped breathing.

His impenetrable facade cracked right down the middle.

The expensive burner phone slipped from his slack fingers, and the screen spider-webbed into a dozen jagged lines against the glass of the coffee table.

*I watched the splintered glass scatter across the floor, and for the first time since my death, I felt something shift—not quite a pulse, but the first tremor of a power I did not yet understand. *

Siena POV

Leonardo stared at the splintered screen of the phone.

The collar of his bespoke suit suddenly felt like a hangman's knot. He fumbled at his tie, his Adam's apple bobbing, a sour taste of bile rising in his throat.

Francesca rushed over, her brow furrowed in alarm. "Leo? What happened? Who was that?"

Leonardo did not answer. He pushed past her, his eyes wide and unseeing, and bolted for the door.

I floated right behind him, a formless specter drawn into the vortex of his panic. I watched the powerful, untouchable Don stumble down the hallway like a man in his cups.

He took the stairs to the roof two at a time, the frantic slap of his leather soles echoing in the concrete stairwell.

I followed him, remembering the last time we were on these stairs. The roots of my hair had burned where his fist was knotted. My knees had slammed against the hard edges of the metal grates.

I had loved him completely. I had offered up my dignity on a platter to be his loyal instrument.

My father had the muscle, and Leonardo had the ambition. Their alliance was what had put Leonardo on the throne.

When Leonardo proposed to me right after I graduated college, I thought he finally saw me. I thought he finally loved me.

I had abandoned my swimming career for him. I stayed in the shadows, ignoring the late nights and the cloying, alien scent of cheap perfume on his collars when Francesca moved back to the States.

I had bought my own brutal execution with my blind loyalty.

Leonardo burst through the heavy roof doors, the hinges groaning in protest against his force.

The scene was already chaotic. The maintenance men had called the syndicate's private medical examiner, but someone else had tipped off the feds.

Men in dark windbreakers with FBI printed in bright yellow were securing the perimeter under the harsh, artificial glare of floodlights.

Leonardo pushed his way through the crowd of agents, moving like a man possessed.

"Stop right there," an agent yelled, reaching out to block his path.

Leonardo ignored him, shoving the man aside until he reached the base of the water tank.

The medical examiner was lowering a black body bag onto the concrete roof using a mechanical winch, the gears grinding with a coarse, mechanical sound in the night air.

The zipper was partially open.

The smell hit Leonardo first. It was the heavy, sickeningly sweet stench of rotting meat and stagnant water.

A spasm seized Leonardo's body. He doubled over and heaved up the amber whiskey, the foul liquid splashing across the lapels of his custom suit jacket and his expensive shoes as his frame convulsed with the horror of it.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his chest laboring for air as he forced himself to look at the bag.

A swollen, discolored face peeked out from the dark plastic. The skin was peeling, and the lips were blue and torn.

"No," Leonardo whispered, the sound a raw tear in his throat.

He fell to his knees, the rough concrete scraping through the fine wool of his expensive slacks as if he no longer felt physical pain.

"No. That is not her."

An FBI agent stepped in front of him. "Mr. Vitiello. Step back from the deceased."

Leonardo looked up. His eyes were wild, stripping away the polished mafia boss until he looked completely deranged.

"That is not my wife!" he screamed, the raw anguish in his voice a shockwave that silenced the night.

He lunged forward, his hands reaching desperately for the body bag.

Two armed federal agents tackled him, their combined weight slamming the Don of the Cosa Nostra face-first into the dirty roof.

Leonardo thrashed against them, kicking his legs as he let out a guttural roar, a sound more animal than human.

"Get off me! She is alive! She is not dead!"

The lead agent crouched down next to Leonardo's pinned face, his expression unyielding.

"Your men found her in your water tank," the agent said coldly. "You are coming with us, Vitiello. You have a lot of questions to answer about the Underboss's daughter."

*I hovered above his pinned body, and the cold pressure in my chest swelled into something sharper—a gathering storm. I had been weightless, powerless, for three days. But as I watched him thrash in the grip of men who answered to a law he could not buy, I realized my rage was no longer just a feeling. It was becoming a weapon. *