No caretaker had lasted more than three days with me after the accident, and I made damn sure of it

The Drake Hotel’s Grand Ballroom was a sea of crystal chandeliers, black tuxedos, and silk gowns that cost more than Faith’s family had earned in a decade.

The charity was some vague initiative for inner-city youth, but everyone in the room knew the real purpose: it was the annual neutral-ground summit for Chicago's financial, political, and criminal royalty. Federal prosecutors drank single malt scotch with corporate raiders, while high-ranking aldermen took discreet envelopes from men whose names never appeared on tax returns.

When the heavy double doors opened, the ambient hum of three hundred conversations dropped by half.

Carmine pushed my chair through the entrance, his expression carved from granite, his tuxedo cut loosely to conceal the subcompact automatic nestled beneath his arm.

I wore an eight-thousand-dollar midnight-blue Brioni dinner suit, custom-tailored to sit cleanly across my shoulders without bunching around the chair’s frame. The platinum watch on my wrist was worth a suburban home. My silver-tipped cane rested across my lap—an affectation, perhaps, but also a weapon if things went sideways.

Beside me walked Faith.

The transformation was nothing short of devastating. Mrs. Gable had taken her to an upscale boutique on Oak Street that afternoon on my unlimited black card. She wore an emerald-green silk column dress that pooled gracefully around her heels, hugging the slender curves of her waist and hips. Her hair was swept up into an elegant, loose chignon, exposing the long, flawless line of her throat.

She wore no jewelry except for a single antique diamond pendant I had pulled from my family safe—a piece that had belonged to my grandmother.

She didn't look like a caretaker. She looked like an empress who had stepped down from a portrait to survey her court.

"Smile, boss," Carmine murmured from behind my shoulder. "Every hyena in Cook County is watching your neck."

"Let them look," I replied coldly.

As we navigated the room toward the raised VIP booths near the bandstand, the crowd parted like the Red Sea. I saw Alderman Vane choke on his martini; I saw two capos from the West Side turn pale and pretend to study their program notes.

They thought I was bedridden, drooling into a pillow. Seeing me upright, commanding, dressed in bespoke Italian wool, and flanked by an ethereal beauty sent a tremor of raw uncertainty through the room.

"Well, well. Lazarus has risen from the dead."

The voice was like rusted iron scraping over bone.

Matteo Rossi stepped into our path, holding a champagne flute. He was fifty, thick-necked, wearing an obnoxious white tuxedo that looked like a circus tent, his fingers weighed down by heavy gold signet rings. Flanked by four of his top enforcers, he blocked the carpeted aisle leading to my table.

"Matteo," I said smoothly, coming to a halt. "I see you finally learned how to rent a tuxedo. Progress looks good on you."

A flicker of rage crossed Rossi's eyes before he masked it with a greasy grin. He looked down at the wheels of my chair, his eyes gleaming with malicious triumph.

"I was sorry to hear about your... mobility issues, Dominic," Rossi purred, raising his glass in a mocking toast. "Tragic accident. The whole city wept. We all thought you’d retired to Florida to drink soup through a straw."

"Accidents happen, Matteo," I said, my voice steady, carrying clearly across the surrounding crowd who had gone dead quiet to listen. "Like the two Russian boys who had an accident on my foyer floor forty-eight hours ago. We found them very... unhygienic. Carmine had to burn the rugs."

Rossi’s smile vanished completely. The skin around his nostrils turned white. He hadn't known what happened to his hit squad—only that they hadn't reported back.

"Careful, Dominic," Rossi snarled, dropping the polite facade, stepping half an inch closer. "You aren't the king anymore. You’re a cripple in a rolling chair. You’re sitting in the way of traffic."

Before Carmine could move, before I could raise my cane, Faith stepped forward.

She didn't flinch. She placed one gloved hand delicately on the armrest of my chair, stepped half a pace in front of me, and looked down at Matteo Rossi as if he were a cockroach that had wandered onto her kitchen counter.

"Excuse me, sir," she said, her voice clear, musical, and utterly lethal in its calm precision.

Rossi blinked, surprised. "Who the hell is this little bird?"

"I’m the person who’s going to ask you to move your foot," Faith said, her hazel eyes cutting into him like twin scalpels. "Because if you spill that cheap domestic champagne on Mr. Carter’s shoes, you’re going to spend the rest of the evening explaining to the Alderman why your docks in Gary are being audited by the EPA tomorrow morning."

A collective gasp rippled through the nearest onlookers.

Rossi's face went from pale to a mottled, apoplectic purple. "You little whore—"

"Finish that sentence, Matteo," I interrupted, my voice dropping an octave into a register that made the hair on the back of his enforcers' necks stand up. I raised the silver-tipped cane, placing the polished steel head directly against the center of Rossi’s chest, right over his breastbone. "Finish it, and I swear to you by the blood of my mother, you won't leave this room with your teeth."

The silence in the Grand Ballroom was absolute. You could have heard a pin drop onto the carpet.

Rossi looked at the cane pressed against his sternum, looked at the cold, murderous promise in my eyes, and then looked at Faith, who met his stare without a single tremor of fear.

He stepped back. He swallowed, smoothed the lapels of his white dinner jacket, and tried to recover his swagger.

"Enjoy the music, Dominic," Rossi spat, spinning on his heel and retreating toward the bar with his muscle trailing behind him like whipped dogs.

I lowered the cane, my heart hammering against my ribs—not from fear, but from an overwhelming, intoxicating surge of pride.

I looked up at Faith. She was breathing slightly faster, her cheeks flushed with high color, but she was smiling—that small, wicked, defiant smile that had haunted my thoughts since the moment she walked into my room.

"EPA audits?" I murmured, raising an eyebrow.

"I read Carmine’s briefing papers on your desk while I was dusting yesterday," she whispered back, leaning down so close her lips nearly brushed my ear. Her warmth washed over my cold skin like sunlight. "You have leverage on the Gary sanitation district. I figured I’d use it."

I reached out, my fingers wrapping around her small, warm gloved hand, pulling her back to my side.

"You are a terrifying woman, Faith Willis."