"Mafia Boss Saved His Mistress While His Pregnant Wife Bled—By Dawn, She Vanished With Their Son

The library of the Chicago Athletic Association was a cathedral of nineteenth-century woodcarving, stained glass, and toxic masculinity.

At 2:15 AM, thirty senior capos from the Five Families sat around an enormous forty-foot walnut table, smoking heavy cigars beneath the portraits of long-dead industrial tycoons.

At the head of the table sat Dominic Caruso.

He was a ghost of his former glory. His black suit was wrinkled, his white shirt open at the collar, his gray eyes sunken and bloodshot from three days of sleepless rage. On the table before him sat a bottle of scotch and an unbranded nine-millimeter pistol resting casually over an open map of the Calumet docks.

"The Thorne family stole sixty million dollars of our liquidity while I was in Otisville!" Dominic roared, slamming his open palm against the walnut table, rattling the crystal glasses. "Julian Thorne betrayed the Commission! He laundered our accounts through Switzerland, and he took the woman who belonged to me!"

Don Antonio Moretti, the seventy-year-old patriarch of the South Side, blew a slow cloud of blue smoke into the air, looking at Dominic with tired, unimpressed eyes.

"The woman was your secretary, Dominic," Moretti rasped, his voice sounding like dry gravel. "And according to the public hospital records, she died in the Drake ballroom ten months ago because you were too busy carrying Genevieve Vance to notice she was bleeding out."

"SHE IS NOT DEAD!" Dominic shouted, his vocal cords tearing with unhinged, feral obsession. "The doctor confessed! She’s alive! She’s with Julian! And I want every crew from the North Harbor to the Indiana line mobilized to bring her back to this city!"

CLACK.

The heavy carved double doors at the far end of the library swung open.

The thirty capos went completely, terrifyingly silent.

Walking through the threshold, stepping into the dim amber light of the chandelier, was Julian Thorne.

He did not draw a weapon. He walked down the center aisle of the library with the unhurried, majestic grace of an emperor, his hands buried casually in the pockets of his charcoal overcoat.

Dominic surged to his feet, knocking his leather chair backward onto the floor, his hand grabbing the nine-millimeter pistol from the table, leveling the barrel squarely at Julian’s forehead.

"JULIAN!" Dominic screamed, his hands shaking with violent, murderous adrenaline. "Where is she?! Where is Clara?! Tell me where you hid her, or I will paint this walnut with your brains!"

Julian stopped ten paces away.

He didn't flinch. He didn't blink. He looked at the gun pointed at his face with the cold, detached boredom of a man who had already calculated the outcome of the game three moves in advance.

"Lower the weapon, Dominic," Julian said softly, his deep baritone cutting through the smoke like an industrial blade.

"You don't have the ammunition to fight this room."

"I have thirty men downstairs, you traitor!" Dominic snarled, stepping around the table.

"Your thirty men surrendered their weapons to forty federal tactical marshals on Michigan Avenue six minutes ago, Dominic," a female voice spoke from the shadows of the doorway.

Every head in the room snapped around.

Dominic froze.

His jaw slacked. The color drained from his face so fast that he looked like a corpse dredged from the bottom of the lake. The gun in his hand began to tremble violently, dipping toward the floor.

Walking down the center aisle, her heels clicking cleanly against the hardwood with the rhythmic, terrifying precision of a ticking clock, was me.

I was breathtaking.

I did not wear the oversized, frightened cardigans of his former secretary. I wore an architectural, floor-length gown of deep emerald silk that accentuated the magnificent, regal curves of my body, pooling gracefully around my Italian leather heels. My dark hair was swept up into a severe, elegant chignon, and on my left hand, the four-carat Thorne diamond ring blazed beneath the chandeliers like captured lightning.

"Cla... Clara...?" Dominic whispered, the word tearing out of his throat in a broken, ragged sob of absolute disbelief. "You're... you're alive..."

I stopped beside Julian.

Julian’s arm slid smoothly, possessively around my waist, pulling me flush against his side. I rested my hand over his on my hip, meeting Dominic’s shattered, horrified gaze with an unblinking, crystalline calm that froze the air in the room.