Chapter 1 - The Blood-Stained Polaroid
The silence in the grand reception hall of the Costa mansion was so heavy I could hear the rain tapping frantically against the tall arched windows behind Dominic.
My wrists throbbed beneath the tight bite of the zip-ties. The smell of cold rain, grease from Mabel’s Diner, and the sharp copper tang of dried blood off the evidence bag filled my lungs. I was shivering, my wet waitress uniform sticking to my skin, my heart hammer-thin against my ribs.
Dominic Costa remained crouched in front of me on the marble floor.
He was thirty-two, built like a dark monolith, with hair as black as an open grave and eyes that usually made full-grown men look down at their shoes. But right now, his gaze wasn't on my eyes. It was flicking back and forth between my face and the worn, faded polaroid held between his blood-stained fingers.
“What is this?” he whispered again.
His voice didn't sound like the feared ruler of the North Side syndicate anymore. It sounded like an iron beam cracking under ten tons of ice.
I forced my eyes onto the photograph.
It was a faded, soft-focus photo taken twenty years ago. A summer day. Bright green grass, a rusted red garden swing, and a little girl in a yellow sundress with a scar shaped like a crescent moon right above her left eyebrow. She was laughing, hugging a young boy whose face was blurred out by a sun flare.
I squeezed my eyes shut, my breath catching in my throat.
“Where did Angelo get this?” Dominic demanded, his grip tightening on the edges of the photo so hard the paper creaked. “Tell me, Lena! Why did my brother have a picture of you as a four-year-old child hidden in his secret wallet flap on the night he was ambushed?!”
“I don't know!” I cried, tears breaking through my composure and trailing hot down my rain-chilled cheeks. “I swear on my mother’s grave, I don't know! I’ve worked forty hours a week at Mabel’s for three years! I live in a five-hundred-dollar studio on 4th Street! I’ve never spoken to Angelo Costa in my entire life!”
Dominic stood up in one fluid, terrifying motion. He didn't yell. He walked back to the mahogany table, picked up a silver blade from a tray, and walked back to me.
I flinched, pulling my knees to my chest. “Please—!”
With a swift, practiced flick, Dominic sliced through the plastic ties binding my wrists.
My hands fell to my lap, raw and red. I instinctively brought my left hand up to touch the faint, crescent-shaped scar above my left eyebrow—the exact scar visible in the photograph.
“Pike. Marco,” Dominic commanded without looking back.
The two heavy-set men behind me stepped forward instantly. “Yes, Don Dominic?”
“Clear the room. Get Dr. Vane down here to check her wrists. Bring her dry clothes, hot tea, and move her to the second-floor suite.”
The guards blinked, completely thrown off. “Boss? She’s the primary suspect in Angelo’s hit! The capos are waiting in the basement board room for her head!”
Dominic turned his head slowly. The brief crack in his composure was sealed tight under a layer of absolute, terrifying malice.
“If anyone in this house touches a hair on her head before I get answers,” Dominic said softly, “I will personally skin them in the courtyard. Out. Now.”
The men didn't hesitate. They bowed their heads and backed out of the room, slamming the heavy double doors behind them.
I sat on the cold floor, cradling my wrists, staring up at the man whose brother had died hours ago carrying my childhood memory.
Dominic reached down, taking my elbow gently—almost reverently—and lifted me to my feet.
“You’re going to tell me everything about your childhood, Lena,” Dominic said, his gray eyes searching my face with a terrifying intensity. “Because that boy in the yellow sun flare holding your hand... wasn't Angelo.”
I swallowed hard, my chest aching. “Then who was it?”
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Dominic took a slow, deep breath, his thumb lightly tracing the edge of the photograph.
“It was me.”
