Chapter 1

After three years running the Family's business out of the branch territory, the order finally came to bring me back to the heart of the operation.

On my first day, I'd barely finished swearing the terms of my return when I learned that the captaincy I'd been promised had quietly shrunk into a lieutenant's errand.

I sat in the back stairwell of the social club, hands trembling, and typed out five hundred words asking my husband, Salvatore Falcone, why.

But when the message went through, all I got back was seven words.

【Keep it to Family matters. Report to your capo.】

A second later, a message pinged in the crew's shared thread, tagging every man on the floor. It was from Gina Bruno.

【Thank you all for looking after me these past six months. I've had wine and food sent up to the eighth-floor room, help yourselves~】

Right after, Salvatore dropped a fat envelope of cash into the thread.

【Congratulations, Captain Gina.】

The soldiers' voices drifted in from the corridor.

"Some people are just born under a lucky star."

"Well, she's the Don's protégée. All she had to do was say she wanted a shot, and the whole crew was handed to her."

I stood frozen where I was, my eyes stinging.

Back when Salvatore first built the Family, there'd been a run of territory that was practically sealed, only to get taken off the table at the last second.

We learned later the other side had a name whispered in the right ears.

Once the Family's fortune was made and legitimate, he laid down an ironclad law about who got made and who got a crew: the moment he caught favoritism, no mercy.

So I'd worked myself to the bone, clawing my way up on my own blood and my own name.

And in the end, no respect. Just someone stepping over me.

And the one who arranged it, it turned out, was him.

Fine. If that was how it was, I didn't want the captaincy or the man.

……

I forced down the ache in my throat and finished drafting the papers to sever the blood-bound union.

Staring at the line where my father's name would go, in the end, I still wanted a clear answer.

Eight years bound to him, four of them building this Family together, three of them exiled to the branch territory.

For those three years, I'd run a crew alone, kept every man loyal and unbroken, and brought over a hundred million in a silent partner's backing into the Family's book.

And now I'd been stepped over by someone with no blood on her hands worth naming.

And the reason? Only that she wanted to try.

But I wanted to hear the answer from his own mouth.

I punched the private code into the panel for the top floor: 0924, the day his empire took its throne.

The car rose slowly, the whole territory spreading out beneath me.

I saw the old tenement where Salvatore and I had once crammed together, dreaming up the future, fine-tuning who to bring in and who to bury, hunched over a battered ledger by lamplight.

He'd promised me he'd give me the best of everything.

But once the Family's name was made, he'd buried our marriage underground and sent me off to the branch territory.

He said too many outfits fell apart because a man and his wife sat at the top together.

He also said he wanted me seasoned by fire, not seated beside him on the strength of a wedding band.

I agreed.

Now the old tenement had been torn down, and a row of the Family's fronts stood in its place.

And I'd done everything I set out to do.

But this was how it turned out.

The car stopped on the twenty-eighth floor and opened with a soft chime.

The moment I stepped out, I saw Salvatore at the desk, patiently guiding Gina's hand around a pen.

"Isn't it a lot clearer this way?"

"Don't rush. Take your time."

"There's a sit-down with our partners in a few days. You'll be running the whole thing."

"Don Falcone, I've never coordinated anything that size. If something goes wrong…" Gina let the words trail off, one hand drifting toward her stomach.

"Don't be afraid. Just go for it. Boldly."

Salvatore looked at her, his expression soft in a way I had not seen turned toward me in years.

"No experience? Then you'll earn some."

"As it happens, that money-man you admire will be at the table too. You can get a moment with him, give yourself a little motivation."

The late-autumn light streamed through the tall windows and fell over me.

And yet I'd never felt colder in my life.

All these years, he had never once placed a chance of my own in my hands.

Once, a woman I deeply admired, one who had carved her own standing in a world that armored only men, was speaking at a gathering of the Families.

An invitation had come to us from the ones who called it.