His fiancée ordered me to lick poisoned wine off the Persian rug after whipping me twice, but she never expected the mafia boss to discover why I destroyed that decanter...

One year later.

The winter gala at the Moretti estate was an annual tradition, but this year was different. This year marked the absolute peace across the eastern territory. Under our joint rule, the Moretti syndicate had transitioned sixty percent of its capital into legitimate logistics and pharmaceuticals. The streets were quiet, the ports were clean, and our syndicate was stronger and wealthier than it had ever been in its century-long history.

The grand dining hall was filled with thirty guests—the inner circle, the capos of the five allied families, and our most trusted lieutenants.

I sat at the head of the long mahogany banquet table opposite Dante. I wore a crimson silk gown off the shoulder, my figure fuller and softer now, carrying myself with the unquestioned majesty of a reigning queen. Dante looked across the length of the table at me, raising his crystal goblet with a subtle, intimate wink that made my heart flutter just as fiercely as it had on the first night.

"To the Don and Donna," Marco announced, standing at the head of the table to deliver the traditional solstice toast. "A year of unbroken peace, unprecedented wealth, and the eternal glory of House Moretti!"

"To the Don and Donna!" the guests echoed, raising their goblets.

Laughter and conversation filled the hall as the waitstaff brought out the main course: a magnificent roasted venison with a reduction of red wine and winter berries.

Beside me sat Don Carlone, an elderly capo from Chicago who had known Dante’s grandfather.

"You have tamed a wild beast, Donna Cora," Carlone chuckled, taking a sip of his wine. "In forty years, I have never seen Dante Moretti look at any human being with anything other than cold calculation. But when he looks at you... he looks at a man who has found his god."

"Dante is not a beast, Don Carlone," I smiled gently, cutting into my meal. "He is simply a man who understands that strength without loyalty is just a hollow weapon."

"Wise words," Carlone nodded respectfully. "Alexander would be immensely proud of the woman you have become."

Across the table, Dante stood up, tapping his silver fork against his crystal flute. The entire room instantly fell silent, every eye turning toward the master of the house.

"My friends," Dante began, his voice deep and commanding, echoing through the candlelit hall. "Tonight is not merely a celebration of a successful year. Tonight, we celebrate a milestone that guarantees the survival and legacy of this family for another century."

He paused, looking directly at me, his dark eyes filled with an overwhelming, tender pride that made the breath catch in my throat.

"Tomorrow morning, the construction of our new maternal clinic in Boston begins," Dante continued. "And in seven months... Donna Cora and I will welcome the heir to the Moretti name."

A split second of stunned silence gripped the room, followed immediately by an explosion of deafening cheers, applause, and glasses clinking. Capos jumped to their feet, shouting congratulations in Italian, raising their arms in jubilation.

I placed a gentle hand over my stomach, feeling the slight, beautiful swell beneath the crimson silk, looking across the room at my husband whose smile was brighter than the chandelier above him.

Suddenly, a strange, sickening scent drifted across the banquet table.

It was faint. Almost imperceptible beneath the rich aroma of roasted meat and mulled wine.

A cold prickle of ice shot straight down my spine.

It was not aconite.

It was *ricin*—combined with an aerosolized dimethyl sulfoxide base. A contact poison. Skin-permeable.

My eyes snapped toward the crystal decanter of vintage port being poured by a newly hired server standing directly behind Dante’s left shoulder.

The server wore the white uniform of the Moretti household, but as he tilted the silver-tipped carafe, I caught a glimpse of his right wrist.

Underneath his white cuff was a faint, blue-ink tattoo: the twin scythes of the Sicilian Old Guard—the fanatical loyalists of Dante’s executed uncle.

"Dante, DON'T TOUCH THE GLASS!" I screamed, slamming my hands on the mahogany table and rising to my feet.

The room froze in absolute shock.

The server’s eyes widened in sudden terror. Realizing he had been caught, he didn't pour the wine. Instead, he dropped the decanter, whipped out a concealed ceramic blade, and lunged violently forward, aiming the poisoned steel straight at Dante’s throat.

"MORETTI!" the assassin roared.

Dante didn't flinch. In a split second of lethal instinct, he threw his heavy wooden chair back, caught the assassin’s wrist in mid-air with a sickening crunch of breaking bone, and slammed the man’s face down onto the mahogany table, shattering plates and glasses in a violent spray of porcelain.

Marco and three guards instantly drew their firearms, their boots thundering across the floor as they surrounded the screaming, pinned assassin.

"Clear the room! LOCK THE GATES!" Marco barked.

Guests screamed, overturning chairs as panic swept through the banquet hall.

Dante kept his heavy hand pressed against the back of the assassin's bloody neck, breathing heavily. His eyes, dark as midnight and burning with volcanic fury, flicked across the room toward me. "Cora! Are you alright?!"

"I'm fine!" I yelled, hurrying around the table toward him, keeping my distance from the shattered glass on the floor.

Dante wrenched the assassin’s head up by his hair. The man was coughing blood, spitting onto the white tablecloth, but his bloody lips curled into a terrifying, triumphant grin.

"You think... you think you won, Moretti?" the assassin wheezed, his voice bubbling with bloody phlegm. "You think... Genevieve and Julian were the heads of the snake?"

Dante drew his pistol, pressing the cold steel barrel between the assassin’s eyes. "Who sent you?"

The assassin let out a wet, rattling laugh, his eyes darting toward the high stained-glass windows of the dining hall overlooking the courtyard outside.

"Look out the window, Don Moretti," the assassin whispered, his blood-stained teeth bared in an evil sneer. "The Old Guard doesn't forgive. And we didn't come for you."

A sudden, deafening *THUD* echoed from the courtyard outside, followed by the frantic, mechanical howling of the estate’s secondary defense alarms.

Across the compound, the lights flickered and plunged into pitch-black darkness.

Only the flickering candlelight remained in the grand dining hall, casting long, demonic shadows against the stone walls.