By the time I stood beneath the chandeliers and offered marriage to any woman who could make my silent son speak,

The ground-floor library was dark, illuminated only by the dying embers of the hearth and the pale, eerie glow of the snowstorm battering the French doors outside.

Marcus Bianchi stood by the mahogany bar in the corner, pouring himself a two-finger glass of Macallan scotch, his service pistol resting in its holster beneath his left arm. At forty-five, Marcus carried himself with the heavy, unearned arrogance of a man who believed his thirty years of loyalty had placed him above the rules of the house.

The heavy oak doors of the library groaned open.

Marcus didn't turn around immediately, assuming it was one of the estate guards checking the perimeter rotations.

"Pour me one too, Marcus," I said.

The enforcer froze.

He slowly set the crystal decanter down, turned around, and saw me standing in the center of the Persian rug, my sleeves rolled up to my elbows, my knuckles bare and white.

"Boss," Marcus said, his voice dropping into its usual gruff familiarity. "Can't sleep? The storm's keeping the whole wing awake."

"You put your hands on my wife, Marcus," I stated.

The words were flat, steady, completely devoid of inflection.

Marcus let out a short, dismissive breath, a faint, condescending smirk crossing his scarred mouth. "Ah. The little nurse from Milwaukee. Vinnie, come on. Let's be reasonable. She's a temp worker we pulled off the streets to play babysitter. She doesn't know the hierarchy of this house. She was wandering through the service wing asking questions about your offshore accounts—"

I crossed the twenty-foot expanse of the room in three explosive strides before he could finish the sentence.

My right hand shot out, catching Marcus by the silk lapel of his suit jacket, lifting his two-hundred-pound frame off the floorboards and driving him backward into the solid mahogany bookshelves with a concussive CRACK that sent thirty leather-bound volumes crashing down onto the parquet.

Marcus choked out a raw, desperate gasp, his hands flying to my wrists, trying to pry my fingers loose.

"Boss... Vinnie... what the hell—?!"

"You were my brother, Marcus," I whispered into his face, my slate-gray eyes burning with an apocalyptic fury that made the enforcer's eyes dilate in absolute terror.

"I trusted you with my life. I trusted you with my son. And you laid your hands on the woman who brought my boy back from the dead."

I didn't draw a weapon. I drove my left fist straight into his solar plexus with seventy pounds of dead, unyielding leverage.

Marcus doubled over, vomiting air, his legs buckling beneath him as I slammed him face-first onto the Persian rug.

"Listen to me very carefully, Marcus," I said, pressing my knee firmly into the small of his back, leaning down until my lips brushed his ear.

"You are going to pack your duffel bag tonight. You are going to take your car and drive south until you hit the state line. And if you ever show your face within five hundred miles of this estate again... I won't have Marcus shoot you."

I reached down, drew his service pistol from its holster, ejected the magazine onto the floor, and tossed the weapon across the room into the fireplace.

"I'll do it myself."

Marcus crawled forward on his hands and knees, coughing violently, wiping the blood from his split lip with the back of his hand. He didn't argue. He didn't invoke his fifteen years of service. He looked into my eyes, saw the abyss staring back at him, and scrambled out of the library on all fours like a beaten dog, his boots echoing frantically down the marble hallway.

I stood alone in the dark library, the dying embers casting long, jagged shadows across the walls.

My knuckles were bruised and bleeding. My breathing was ragged.