Mafia boss Bennett Hale thought the young maid in his mansion was only there to clean, until he came home early and found her crying beside his dying mother, gently shaving away the last of her hair. Then his mother looked him in the eye and revealed why Clara had really come into their lives, and suddenly everything Bennett thought his power and money had bought him meant nothing.

"Out," I told Dominic.

Dominic didn't move. His hand remained glued to the grip of his pistol, his dark eyes locked on Clara like a hawk watching a field mouse. "Boss, you don't understand. Vincent Vane sent a photo over an encrypted link ten minutes ago. It shows this girl meeting with his top enforcer in an alley in South Brooklyn three days ago."

My heart went cold, dropping into a dark, bottomless pit.

I turned back to Clara. The sympathy that had briefly flared in my chest hardened into pure, unadulterated ice. In my line of work, sentimentality was a quick way to get a bullet through the back of your skull.

"Is this true?" I asked her, my voice unnaturally calm. "Were you talking to the Vanes?"

"I met a man!" Clara stammered, backing away until her shoulder hit the bookshelf. "He called my apartment two weeks ago! He said he had my father's original trust documents! He said he could help me get what your father stole from my mother! I didn't know he was a mobster, Bennett! I didn't know who Vincent Vane was!"

"She's playing you, Boss," Dominic spat, stepping forward, pulling his weapon halfway out of its leather holster. "She’s a Trojan horse. Old man Vane has been trying to break our grip on the harbor for five years. He used her to get inside your perimeter."

"Dominic, touch her and I'll kill you myself," my mother growled from her wheelchair, her frail body shaking with an extraordinary, furious energy. She reached out, placing her thin arm protectively across Clara's waist. "She didn't give them anything! Look at her! She’s been living in a tiny bedroom on the third floor, eating leftovers, and nursing a dying old woman! Does she look like an assassin to you?!"

"She looks like a loose end," Dominic said coldly.

"Dominic," I said, my voice cutting through the room like a razor blade. "Leave the gun in the leather. Step back."

Dominic hesitated for two terrifying seconds. Then, slowly, he released his weapon and stepped back toward the doorway, his jaw clenched tight.

I walked around my desk until I was standing inches from Clara. She didn't flinch. She looked right up into my eyes, her breathing fast and shallow.

"What did you tell Vane's man in that alley?" I demanded.

"I told him to leave me alone," Clara sobbed. "He handed me an envelope full of cash and told me to leave the security codes for the east gate under the service mat. I threw the money back in his face! I told him I wouldn't hurt your mother for all the money in New York!"

"Did you keep the envelope?" I asked.

"No! I burned it in the incinerator downstairs!"

I stared at her for five long seconds, analyzing every micro-expression on her face—the flare of her nostrils, the tremor in her lower lip, the raw, unfiltered terror in her eyes. She wasn't lying. She was a pawn caught in a game played by grandmasters.

Vincent Vane didn't expect Clara to betray me. He knew Dominic would track her. He wanted me to find out who she was, lose my temper, and murder my own cousin inside my own house. It was a setup to break my family from the inside out, exposing my father's old secrets and destroying whatever soul I had left.

"Dominic," I said, without turning around.

"Yeah, Boss?"

"Tell Vincent Vane I'll meet him at the docks in one hour."

"And the girl?" Dominic asked.