Every beautiful woman in Chicago had tried to capture the attention of the city's most feared mafia boss, and every one of them had failed. Then I accidentally sang an old lullaby while cleaning his penthouse, and the most dangerous man I had ever met froze like he had seen a ghost.

The silver frame felt icy against my fingertips.

In the black-and-white photograph, a young woman with dark, cascading curls stood in front of a stone villa somewhere in the Sicilian countryside. She wore a simple floral dress, her hands resting gently over a slight swell in her stomach.

Her smile was soft, almost hesitant, but it was her eyes that made my breath catch in my throat.

They were my eyes.

The shape of her jaw, the slight crook in her nose, the distinct arch of her left eyebrow—it was like staring into a mirror that had been pulled from a forgotten decade.

Below the photograph, etched into a small brass plate fixed to the bottom of the frame, were three words: Elena Rossi Russo — 1978.

"Her name was Elena," a deep, velvet voice spoke from the doorway.

I gasped, dropping the frame onto the mahogany shelf. It clattered against the wood, the glass trembling, but miraculously didn't shatter. I whipped around, my hands flying behind my back, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.

Vincenzo leaned against the doorframe. He had removed his jacket, revealing the dark gray vest beneath, his crisp white shirt sleeves rolled up to his forearms to expose pale skin mapped with faint silver scars and intricate black ink. He held an unlit cigar between two fingers, his dark, impenetrable eyes locked onto my face.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Russo!" I stammered, my voice shrinking into a pitch-thin whisper. "I wasn't snooping, I promise. I was just dusting the shelf and—"

"I know when you're lying, Lucia," he interrupted, his voice surprisingly soft, yet vibrating with an underlying authority that made the air in the room feel dense. "You weren't dusting. You were looking."

I swallowed hard, my knuckles turning white behind my back. "She... she looks like me."

Vincenzo didn't answer immediately. He pushed away from the doorframe and crossed the thick Persian rug with silent, feline grace. He stopped barely two feet away from me. He was tall—broad-shouldered and imposing—and he smelled faintly of sandalwood, cedar, and expensive tobacco.

He reached past me, his long, warm fingers brushing my arm as he picked up the silver frame. He looked down at the photograph for a long, suffocating moment before placing it gently back on the shelf, faceup this time.

"She was my mother," Vincenzo said softly. "And that lullaby you were humming on the ladder... it isn't just a Sicilian lullaby, Lucia. It was written by her father in a small village outside Palermo. It was never published. It was never recorded."

A chill ran down my spine, dropping the temperature of my blood to zero.

"My grandmother taught it to me," I whispered, my mind racing through forgotten childhood memories of Queens—the smell of simmering garlic, the clink of porcelain tea cups, and a quiet, elderly woman who rarely spoke about her past before arriving in New York. "She said her mother sang it to her."

Vincenzo reached out. His fingers hovered inches from my cheek, close enough for me to feel the heat radiating from his skin, before he slowly tucked a loose strand of dark hair behind my ear. His touch was agonizingly gentle for a man whose name made Chicago's most powerful politicians shudder.

"Your grandmother's name was Rosa, wasn't it?" he asked low.

My eyes widened in sheer shock. "How... how do you know that?"

Before Vincenzo could answer, the sharp, frantic sound of heavy footsteps echoed down the hallway outside his office.

Marco, Vincenzo's second-in-command—a towering man with a broken nose and a scar bisecting his left eyebrow—burst into the room without knocking. He didn't even look at me. His face was pale, slick with cold sweat.

"Boss," Marco panted, his hand resting on the grip of the concealed pistol under his jacket. "We've got a problem at the warehouse on 14th Street. The Moretti syndicate just crossed the river. They took three of our trucks, and Donato Moretti himself is on his way here."

The gentle, haunting atmosphere in the office disintegrated in a fraction of a second.

Vincenzo didn't move fast, but his whole aura shifted. The subtle human warmth I had glimpsed vanished, replaced instantly by the cold, terrifying ruthless mafia boss who ruled the city's underworld. His jaw set into hard granite, his eyes turning into dark, lifeless slate.

"Lock down the building," Vincenzo commanded, his voice dropping into an icy register. "Get the perimeter team to the lower parking levels."

"What about her?" Marco asked, finally flicking his sharp gaze toward me.

Vincenzo looked at me. The darkness in his eyes softened for a brief, fleeting heartbeat before hardening again.

"Take her to the safe room behind the wine cellar," Vincenzo ordered flatly. "If anyone breaches the private elevator, Marco... you shoot to kill."

"Wait!" I cried out, shrinking back as Marco took a step toward me. "My brother—Mateo is coming home from school in an hour! He doesn't have his spare inhaler! I need to go home!"

Vincenzo grabbed my arm. His grip was firm, unyielding, but not painful. He pulled me close, forcing me to look directly into his dark, storm-filled eyes.

"Listen to me, Lucia," he murmured, his breath hot against my cheek. "Donato Moretti is a butcher. If he sees you in this penthouse—if he sees your face—you will never see your brother again. Do you understand me?"