My father sold me to Chicago’s most feared Mafia boss for just fifty dollars, and everyone warned me I wouldn't survive a week in his mansion.

The South Side of Chicago smelled of wet asphalt, sulfur, and burning trash.

The house I had grown up in was a miserable, single-story wood-frame shack tucked between two abandoned industrial lots on 118th Street. The roof sagged in the middle like a broken spine; the front porch steps were rotted through, and yellowed plastic sheeting was stapled over two of the front windows to keep out the October wind.

At 7:00 AM, a convoy of four black armored Mercedes sedans blocked both ends of the narrow street.

I sat in the back of the lead car, wearing an elegant, charcoal-gray wool coat Vincent had bought for me that morning from an exclusive boutique on Michigan Avenue. Beneath the coat was a simple, tailored black dress. My hair was swept up into a neat, professional twist. For the first time in my twenty-three years of life, I didn't look like an exhausted maid who smelled of bleach and ammonia.

I looked like a Don's wife.

"Are you ready?" Vincent asked, sitting beside me.

His hand was resting over mine on the leather seat. He was wearing a charcoal three-piece suit, his overcoat unbuttoned to reveal the holster beneath his arm. He wore a tiny, flesh-colored acoustic dampener in his right ear—not to restore his hearing, but to dial back the harsh decibels of the city so his brain wouldn't overload.

"I’ve waited seven years for this," I whispered.

We stepped out of the vehicle into the freezing drizzle.

Four heavily armed Moretti enforcers took positions at the corners of the yard, their hands inside their coats, scanning the desolate street. Vincent walked beside me, his long, deliberate strides matching mine as we climbed the creaking front steps of the shack.

Vincent didn't knock. He planted the heel of his Italian leather boot squarely against the latch, kicking the front door clean off its frame.

The door crashed inward onto the filthy linoleum with a thunderous bang.

Inside, the living room reeked of stale beer, unwashed bodies, and cheap cigar smoke. Empty whisky bottles and discarded TV dinner trays littered the stained coffee table.

On the sagging plaid sofa, my older brother Tyler scrambled awake, knocking an empty beer bottle to the floor. He was twenty-six, disheveled, with greasy hair and the yellowed, bloodshot eyes of a chronic alcoholic.

"What the hell—!" Tyler yelled, reaching toward the coffee table where a rusted .38 revolver lay beside an ashtray.

Before his fingers could touch the grip, two Moretti enforcers stepped in, grabbed Tyler by the back of his dirty hoodie, and slammed his face down onto the wooden floorboards, pinning his arms behind his back with plastic zip-ties.

"Tyler!" a raspy, panicked voice screamed from the rear hallway.

My father, Arthur Vance, stumbled out of the bedroom, clutching a stained bathrobe around his bloated stomach. In his right hand, he held a half-empty bottle of gin. He was sixty-one, his face lined with the cruel, bitter creases of a man who had blamed everyone else in the world for his own miserable failures.

"Who the hell are you people?" Arthur yelled, raising the bottle like a club. "Get out of my house or I’ll call the cops!"

Then, Arthur’s eyes landed on me.

He froze. His jaw dropped, revealing a row of yellow, decaying teeth.

"Clara?" Arthur stammered, his gaze drifting from my face to the diamond earrings in my ears, to the tailored wool coat, and finally to the massive, imposing figure of Vincent Moretti standing silently at my side.

"Hello, Father," I said, my voice eerily calm.

Arthur’s eyes widened with greedy realization. He let out a nervous, wheezing chuckle, lowering the bottle. "Well, well, well... look at you! Look at my little girl! Dressed up like a high-society princess! See, Tyler? What did I tell you? I told you marrying her off to Mr. Moretti was the best thing that ever happened to this family!"

He took a step toward me, reaching out with a dirty, nicotine-stained hand. "Clara, baby, tell these goons to let your brother up. We’re family now! Mr. Moretti, sir, it’s an honor. Did you come to discuss the rest of the dowry? Because forty grand was just the interest on my debt, you know. A girl as pretty as Clara is worth at least—"

Crack.

Vincent moved so fast the air seemed to split.

His fist struck Arthur across the jaw with the force of a swinging steel beam. The older man was lifted clean off his feet, his body crashing through the flimsy wooden coffee table, splintering the legs and shattering three dozen glass bottles across the floor.

Tyler screamed from the carpet. "Dad!"

Arthur lay in the wreckage of the table, spitting blood and broken teeth, clutching his fractured jaw in whimpering agony.

Vincent didn't draw his gun. He slowly knelt on one knee in the broken glass, resting his forearms on his thigh as he stared down at the trembling old man.

"Fifty dollars," Vincent said.

Arthur’s eyes bulged in absolute, petrified horror. He stared at Vincent's lips, then at his cold, leveling gaze.

"You... you can hear..." Arthur wheezed through a mouthful of blood.

"Fifty dollars," Vincent repeated, his voice vibrating with a lethal, rhythmic calm. "That is the price you put on your own daughter. You took fifty dollars from Leo Moretti’s bagman, handed her over on the side of the road, and went straight to the track to bet it on the fourth race."

Vincent reached inside his suit pocket and pulled out a single, crisp fifty-dollar bill.

He leaned down and slapped the bill onto Arthur’s bloody chest.

"Consider your debt settled," Vincent whispered.

Vincent rose to his feet and turned to me. "What do you want done with them, Clara? Say the word, and they end up at the bottom of Lake Michigan before noon."

Tyler began to sob hysterically against the floor. "Clara, please! We’re your family! Don't let him kill us! We're your blood!"

I walked over to where Tyler lay pinned, looking down at the brother who had held me by the wrists while our father beat me with a leather belt whenever I didn't bring home enough cleaning money from the suburbs.

"Blood doesn't make you family, Tyler," I said softly. "It just makes you related."

I looked up at Vincent.

"Don't waste a bullet on them," I said, my voice steady and free of pity. "Take the house. The deed is registered under the Moretti lending arm anyway. Put them on a Greyhound bus to North Dakota with twenty dollars in their pockets. If they ever step foot inside Cook County again, let Dante handle them."

Tyler let out a wail of despair, while Arthur curled into a fetal position in the broken glass, clutching his bloody jaw.

Vincent looked at me, a deep, burning pride flashing in his dark eyes.

"You heard the lady," Vincent told his enforcers. "Pack them up."