“SAY CHEESE!” — The Maid’s Toddler Took a Photo With the Mafia Boss… Then He Saw What Was Behind Him

At two o'clock in the morning, the door opened again.

Adrien returned alone. He had changed his shirt; the white linen was gone, replaced by a dark wool sweater that smelled faintly of pine soap and cold air. His knuckles were bruised, the skin red and swollen across the right hand, but his eyes were completely clear.

He walked over to the stainless steel sink, ran the cold water, and held his hands under the stream.

“Marcus talked,” Adrien said, without looking back.

Renzo stood up immediately. “Who reached him?”

“Matteo Rossi,” Adrien said, turning off the tap and drying his hands on a gray towel.

Renzo let out a low whistle. “The Council Elder? Rossi has been sitting on the High Commission since your father was in diapers. He’s eighty years old. What does he want with Dominic Vance?”

“Rossi wants the Hudson berths,” Adrien said, walking over to the table and leaning heavily against it. “He’s old, but his grandsons are greedy. Dominic promised them forty percent of the Atlantic transit routes if they helped him clear me off the board. Vance didn't come back just for blood. He came back to take the entire northern territory.”

He looked toward the bed where Mia was sleeping, her small arms flung wide across the pillows.

“Rossi is hosting the Midwinter Solstice Gala at the Metropolitan Club on Friday,” Adrien said. “The entire syndicate leadership will be in the room. Every family from Boston to Philadelphia.”

“It’s a trap,” Renzo said instantly. “If Rossi is in bed with Vance, Friday night is an ambush. They’ll have thirty men in the service elevators. You can’t go into that room.”

“I’m not going into the room to negotiate,” Adrien replied, his voice dropping into a register that made the hair on my arms stand up. “I’m going into that room to show them that Dominic Vance’s bullet missed.”

He turned to look at me.

“Clara.”

I sat up straight on the sofa. “Yes?”

“Tomorrow, Renzo is moving you and Mia to my penthouse on Park Avenue.”

“No,” I said immediately. “You said the city was dangerous.”

“The estate is compromised until my teams completely rewire the security nodes,” Adrien said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “The penthouse is a vault. It occupies the top three floors of a building owned entirely by my holding firm. The elevators require three separate biometric confirmations. The glass is two-inch laminated polycarbonate—it can stop a rocket-propelled grenade. You will be safe there.”

“And what about you?” I asked, my voice trembling despite my best efforts to sound defiant. “You’re going to this party? To let them shoot at you again?”

Adrien walked over to the sofa. He didn't tower over me; he bent down, resting one knee on the floor, bringing himself down to my eye level just as he had done for Mia’s photograph.

“Clara, when a predator smells fear, he attacks. If I hide in this cellar, Rossi and Vance will realize they have the initiative. They will send teams to your mother’s town. They will dig up your past. They will find every person you have ever spoken to until they find a way to make you bleed to get to me.”

He reached out. For a second, I thought he was going to touch my face, but his hand stopped mid-air, hovering just inches from my cheek, as if he realized the violence on his skin had no right to touch me.

“I won't let them look at you,” he said, his voice husky and low. “The only way to end this is to cut off the head of the snake in front of the entire assembly. When Rossi falls, Vance will have no money, no safe houses, and no army left in New York. He will be a rat in a sewer again.”

“You could die,” I said. The words slipped out before I could censor them.

A strange, sad shadow crossed Adrien’s mouth. Not quite a smile, but something infinitely more dangerous: hope.

“Three days ago, Clara, I didn't care if I lived or died. I had a ledger of debts to collect, and once they were paid, I didn't see much point in the rest of it.”

He looked at Mia, whose chest rose and fell in peaceful, untroubled rhythm.