A Mafia Boss looked down on his maid after catching her

Beatrice Gallagher walked with her head bowed against the storm, clutching a worn canvas bag to her chest like a mother protecting an infant. Inside that bag was a cracked plastic container holding cold prime rib and roasted vegetables—leftovers from my dining room table that would have otherwise ended up in the incinerator.

To my underboss, Lorenzo Vale, it was simple: theft was a disease, and Beatrice was a vector. In the Moretti syndicate, stepping over the line—even by a inch—usually meant a bullet in the dark or a cold bath in the river. But when I looked into Beatrice’s eyes through the security feed in my study, I hadn't seen greed. I had seen sheer, unadulterated terror.

She wasn't stealing to profit. She was stealing to survive. Or worse, to keep someone else alive.

We turned away from the grand architecture of the Gold Coast, descending into the decaying streets of the South Side where the streetlights flickered like dying candles. The snow lay thick and unplowed here, choking the gutters and piling against abandoned storefronts.

Beatrice slipped down a narrow alleyway wedged between two derelict brick tenements. The snow muffled her footsteps, but the crunch beneath my leather boots was unmistakable. I stayed close to the shadows, my hand resting heavily on the custom Kimber .45 holstered inside my coat.

She stopped in front of a rusted iron door at the basement level of a half-collapsed apartment complex. Her hands were shaking so violently from the cold that it took her three agonizing attempts to fit a brass key into the padlock.

When the heavy door finally groaned open, a dim yellow light spilled onto the snow. Beatrice slipped inside, closing the door behind her, but the latch failed to catch.

I approached silently, my boots gliding through her fresh tracks. I pressed my back against the damp concrete wall, listening.

"I'm back," Beatrice’s voice drifted out, trembling and faint. "I brought food tonight. Real food, warm... well, it was warm when I left."

"You shouldn't have risked it, Bea," a soft, raspy voice replied from inside. "If he caught you..."

"He didn't," Beatrice insisted, her tone filled with a tender desperation. "Don Dominic was in his study all evening. He doesn't care about the kitchen staff. Eat, please. You haven't had meat in weeks."

I felt a strange tightening in my chest. Don Dominic. They were talking about me.

I nudged the door open an inch, peering through the gap.

The room was tiny, windowless, and freezing. A single kerosene heater flickered in the corner, casting long, dancing shadows across cracked plaster walls. Sitting on a narrow cot wrapped in threadbare blankets was a woman.

Her hair was silvered and matted, her body frail beyond belief. Large, jagged burn scars swept up the left side of her neck, pulling at her jawline. But as she lifted her head into the dim amber light of the heater, her eyes caught the glow.

My heart stopped. The icy air in my lungs turned to liquid lead.

Deep, striking violet-blue eyes. Eyes that belonged to only one bloodline in the entire city of Chicago.

Twelve years ago, a catastrophic explosion destroyed the Moretti warehouse on Pier 4. My father’s empire was crippled, and my younger sister, Sophia Moretti—the crown jewel of our family, only sixteen years old at the time—was declared dead. Lorenzo Vale had brought me the dental records himself. He had wept at my side as we buried an empty casket in the family vault.

I had spent twelve years waging a bloody, merciless war across the Midwest to avenge her death, slaughtering three rival families based on intelligence Lorenzo provided.

And yet, sitting on a rusted cot in a freezing basement, eating cold beef out of a plastic container, was my sister.

Sophia was alive.

I pushed the heavy iron door open. It slammed against the concrete wall with a sound like a gunshot.

Beatrice shrieked, dropping the container onto the floor. She instantly threw her small body in front of the cot, shielding Sophia with her own frame.

"Don Dominic!" Beatrice gasped, dropping to her knees, her hands clasped in frantic prayer. "Please! Please, sir, it was me! I stole the food! She had nothing to do with it! Kill me, but don't hurt her!"

I didn't hear her. I couldn't move. My hand slipped off the grip of my gun as I took a slow, agonizing step forward.

The woman on the cot shrank back against the damp brick, her breath coming in ragged gasps. But as I stepped into the light, pulling down my scarf, her violet eyes widened.