The Mafia Boss Couldn’t Eat—Until the Maid He Tried to Own Became the Woman Who Destroyed His Enemies...

By midnight, Marcus was gone—taken down to the estate’s sub-basement processing room by Enzo’s most loyal soldiers. The house was locked down tighter than a federal penitentiary.

Norah sat in the grand parlor downstairs, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket, a warm mug of black tea resting in her lap. The shock of the encounter in the monitoring room had settled into a low, thrumming fatigue across her muscles.

The heavy parlor doors opened.

Vincent walked in. He had changed into a dark charcoal suit, his white shirt crisp against his throat. The gaunt, hollow look that had haunted his face for months was fading, replaced by the dangerous, terrifying authority of a man who had reclaimed his throne.

He sat down on the leather sofa opposite her, placing a glass of scotch on the low coffee table.

"Marcus sang," Vincent said plainly.

Norah looked up from her tea. "Russo?"

"Russo," Vincent confirmed, leaning his elbows on his knees. "Frank Russo offered Marcus two million dollars and control of the Brooklyn docks if he could eliminate me without triggering an open gang war. Russo wanted my territory, but he didn't want the Commission getting involved in a bloody street battle. So they chose poison."

"And my brother?" Norah asked, her throat tight.

Vincent’s gaze softened slightly—a rare, brief flicker of warmth in an otherwise iron face. "Caleb’s fifteen thousand dollar gambling debt wasn't an accident, Norah. Russo’s men targeted him at the underground casino in Queens. They let him win two thousand the first night, then drained him for thirty thousand the next week. They wanted leverage on your family because they knew you worked the night cleaning shift at my primary residence."

Norah set her mug down on the table, her hands shaking slightly. "They were planning to use Caleb to force me to poison you."

"Yes," Vincent said coldly. "Except you beat them to the punch by making chicken broth out of scraps and saving my life before they could even approach you."

He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a small leather-bound notebook.

"Russo doesn't know Marcus has been compromised yet," Vincent continued. "He expects a call at dawn confirming that I’m dead. He has Caleb locked in a holding cell behind a butcher shop in Bay Ridge, waiting to use him as collateral if anything goes wrong."

Norah stood up, the wool blanket slipping from her shoulders. "We have to get him out."

"Not we," Vincent said, standing up to meet her gaze. "My men will handle Bay Ridge."

"No," Norah said fiercely, stepping closer to him until she was standing inches from his chest. "Caleb is an idiot, Mr. Rossi, but he’s my brother. If your men go in with guns blazing, Russo’s thugs will put a bullet in his head before you even clear the front door. Russo knows me. He expects me to be terrified."

Vincent looked down at her. For the first time, he didn't look at her as a cleaner or a cook. He looked at her with an intense, unvarnished admiration.

"What are you proposing, Miss Bennett?" he asked softly.

"I go to Bay Ridge with the twenty thousand dollars you gave me," Norah said, her mind working with razor-sharp clarity. "I pretend I don't know anything about you or Marcus. I play the desperate, terrified sister paying off her brother's debt. I get inside that butcher shop. And while Russo is distracted counting the cash..."

She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a small, metallic USB drive—the second drive she had pulled from the estate’s master console.

"I plug this into Russo’s office terminal," she said, her eyes flashing with cold fire. "It deploys the keylogger program your tech guy showed me downstairs. Within four seconds, your team gets full access to Russo’s encrypted bank ledgers, his hit lists, and his wire transfers."

Vincent stared at her, stunned into complete silence.

Slowly, a dark, dangerous smile spread across his sharp features—the first genuine smile Norah had ever seen on his face.

"You are a terrifying woman, Norah Bennett," Vincent murmured, his voice dropping into a velvet hum that vibrated through her chest.

"I'm a girl who wants her life back," she replied.

Vincent reached out, his long fingers cupping the side of her jaw. His touch was warm, firm, and astonishingly gentle for a man whose hands had ordered a hundred deaths.

"If you go into Bay Ridge, you don't go alone," Vincent whispered, his hazel eyes locking onto hers. "I will be fifty yards away in an armored van. My rifle will be trained on Frank Russo’s forehead the entire time you are in that room. If he so much as looks at you wrong, I will erase his entire family from this city."