Everyone Feared the Mafia Boss

August Rail did not believe in coincidences. In his world, things happened because a ledger had been balanced, a debt had been called, or a bullet had found its mark. Coincidences were for tourists and politicians who needed an excuse when their schemes unraveled.

And yet, for the past thirty-six hours, the feeling of a stranger’s palm against his chest had refused to leave him.

He sat behind his massive, unvarnished oak desk in the top-floor office of Rail Logistics, the afternoon sun cutting horizontal bars of light across the hardwood floor. To his left stood Vance, his oldest adviser and the only man alive who had known August’s father before the docks became an empire built on silence and steel.

Vance was holding a slim manila folder, his expression tight with disapproval.

"The auction house security logs were wiped, August," Vance said, his voice dry and crackling like old paper. "Standard procedure for a private estate sale involving high-net-worth buyers. No cameras in the main hall during the preview hours. But I pulled the registry for the independent contractors hired to service the instruments."

August didn't look up from the sketch he was absentmindedly tracing on a blank notepad—a series of sharp, jagged lines that resembled nothing so much as a fractured rhythm. "And?"

"Her name is Marin Callaway," Vance read from the sheet. "Twenty-seven years old. Lives in the Marigny. Registered tuner, certified by the Guild of Piano Technicians. Works mostly out of local churches, schools, and private homes. Her references are spotless. No criminal record, no political affiliations, no connections to any of the families on the river."

"You checked her background," August stated. It wasn't a question.

"I check everyone who gets within three feet of you, August," Vance replied sharply. "Especially when they start diagnosing your internal organs in the middle of a crowded room. You've kept that condition quiet for six years. Dr. Sterling swore to me he never wrote it down outside of his private journal, which is currently locked in a vault in Geneva. And yet this girl—this tuner—walks up to you, places her hand on your sternum, and reads your heart like sheet music?"

August finally raised his head. His eyes, the color of winter river water, fixed on Vance with a cold, absolute steadiness. "She didn't read a file, Vance. She used her hands."

"She's blind," Vance spat out, tapping the folder against his thigh. "That makes it worse, not better. People who lose one sense develop an unnerving reliance on the others. They notice things ordinary men ignore. She's a variable, August. And variables introduce risk."

"She’s a piano tuner," August said, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous register that usually signaled the end of a conversation. "She tunes strings that have gone out of pitch. She doesn't pose a threat to the docks."

"She knows your heart is failing," Vance countered, stepping closer to the desk. "If word gets out that August Rail is carrying a terminal defect—that the man holding the river together is one bad ventricle away from collapsing—every scavenger from here to New Orleans will descend on our shipping lines before the body is cold. You know how this city works. Strength is currency. Weakness is an open invitation."

August stood up.

He was taller than Vance by half a head, broader in the shoulders, carrying himself with a suppressed, coiled energy that made the older man instinctively check his posture. He buttoned his black suit jacket over his chest, hiding the erratic, staccato beat that only he—and now, a blind girl with ink-stained fingers—knew was there.

"She doesn't know it's terminal," August said quietly. "She thinks it's tension."

"Then keep her away," Vance warned. "Pay her invoice double, triple whatever she's asking, and make sure she never sets foot in any property connected to our name again."

August walked past his adviser toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking down at the gray expanse of the Mississippi below, where tugboats pushed massive strings of barges against the current. He remembered the feeling of her fingers—light, curious, completely devoid of the calculated deference everyone else showed him. She hadn't flinched from his darkness. She had simply reached out into it.

"No," August said.

Vance stopped in his tracks. "No? What do you mean, no?"

"I bought the Bösendorfer," August said without turning around. "And it needs a regular maintenance schedule. The humidity in this city destroys soundboards within a season."

"August—"

"Arrange a contract," August interrupted, his voice leaving no room for argument. "A yearly retainer. Have her come to the townhouse on Ursulines Street every three months to service the instrument."