The Mafia Boss Took His Maid to His Brother’s Wedding—Then His Enemy Found Out

Dawn broke over Lake Michigan not with gold, but with a flat, pale pewter light that turned the fog into milk.

I woke in a bed that was vast, low to the floor, and smelled entirely of cedar and Alessandro.

He was already up.

He sat at a small teak table near the glass wall that looked out over the gray dunes, wearing a clean charcoal sweater and trousers, an encrypted laptop humming quietly in front of him. A steaming mug of black coffee sat at his elbow, untouched.

Beside him stood Ethan, his left arm bound in a professional black sling, a secure tablet held in his right hand.

I pulled the heavy linen sheet up to my collarbones, sitting up slowly. Every muscle in my body ached—a deep, bruised soreness that was partly from the fight in the library, and partly from the hours before dawn when Alessandro had erased every doubt I had ever harbored about what he wanted from me.

"She’s awake," Ethan muttered, not looking in my direction out of a sudden, scrupulous sense of professional decency.

Alessandro turned his head.

The coldness that had defined his face for the eleven months I had known him was different now. It hadn't vanished—men like him did not change their nature overnight—but when his slate eyes settled on me, the frost retreated, replaced by a possessive, quiet warmth that made my stomach turn over.

"How are your feet?" he asked, his voice rough with morning sleep.

"Usable," I said, clearing the gravel from my throat. "What happened?"

"Antonio Bellini is at the Drake, surrounded by sixty federal agents," Ethan said, tapping the tablet screen. "The FBI raided his trucking depots at four in the morning. Someone fed them twenty years of shipping manifests from the Cicero yards."

I frowned, looking at Alessandro. "You called the Feds?"

"I don't call the Feds," Alessandro said smoothly, taking a sip of his coffee. "I simply leave certain encrypted drives where the Department of Justice can find them without embarrassing themselves. Antonio won't see daylight again until he’s eighty."

"Then it's over?"

"No," Alessandro said, his face darkening. "Calderone is still in the wind. And Calderone didn't get twelve men into Matteo's library through the lake trail without someone turning off the seismic sensors from inside the control room."

The silence in the room became sharp, dangerous.

"The control room is in the basement," I murmured, pulling the sheet tighter as the memory of the previous night flashed through my head. "The only people with keycards for that level are the family and the shift captains."

"Matteo didn't do it," Alessandro said flatly. "And my shift captains have been with me since the warehouse war in 2018."

"Then who?"

"We’re running the access logs now," Ethan said. "Every card swipe between midnight and two."

I sat up straighter, the cold air hitting my bare shoulders. "Who ordered the flowers?"

Ethan blinked, looking confused. "The flowers? The orchids? Elena’s mother handled the decorations."

"No," I said, my mind racing through the hundreds of invoices I had filed in the estate's pantry over the last eleven months. "The arrangements in the south gallery. The white lilies. Matteo’s mother hated lilies. He told the florists never to bring them into the house."

Alessandro leaned forward, his slate eyes narrowing with sudden, razor-sharp interest. "Go on, Grace."

"Three days ago," I said, slipping out of the bed and wrapping the heavy linen sheet around myself like a toga, stepping cautiously on my bandaged feet across the warm hardwood floor, "a delivery van from *Verdi Florals* brought twelve crates into the service basement. The driver didn't have a Moretti manifest. He had a slip signed by Leo."

Ethan froze. "Leo? Your brother?"

"No," I snapped, looking at Alessandro. "Not my brother. Leo Vitucci. Elena’s uncle."

The room went dead silent.

Ethan looked down at his tablet, his thumb flying across the glass with feverish speed. "Leo Vitucci was the head of the catering security detail yesterday. He had access to the master panel in the wine cellar."

"He was five hundred thousand in debt to the Bellini sports books in Gary," Alessandro said, his voice dropping into that terrifying, sub-zero register that signaled an execution was being prepared. "Matteo paid it off two months ago as a wedding gift to Elena."

"He didn't pay it off," Ethan whispered, his eyes wide as the data populated on his screen. "Vitucci doubled down on the Belmont stakes three weeks ago. He lost another eight hundred grand. Antonio owned him."

Alessandro slowly closed the laptop lid. The click sounded like a gunshot.

"Matteo is with Elena now," I whispered, the horror dawning on me. "In the vault."

"And Leo Vitucci is the captain of the outer guard at the Loop tower," Ethan said, his face going gray.

Alessandro rose from the table. He didn't swear. He didn't raise his voice. He simply walked to the nightstand, picked up his Kimber, checked the chamber with a single, practiced tug of the slide, and slotted it into his shoulder holster.

"Ethan," he said.

"Boss?"

"Get the helicopter from the Gary pad. Tell them to clear the rooftop of the Chicago tower."

He turned to me, his hands reaching out to cup my face. His touch was warm, but his eyes were pure, undiluted brimstone.

"You stay here, Grace. There are three guards arriving from the Michigan post in ten minutes. The bunker is sealed from the bedrock."

I caught his wrists. "He’s Matteo's uncle-in-law, Alessandro. If you go in shooting, Elena—"

"Elena will be a widow before breakfast if I don't," he cut me off, his lips pressing hard and fast against mine, tasting of coffee and finality. "Lock the door behind me. If anyone tries the handle before I call the private line, use the rifle beneath the mattress."

"Alessandro—"