The Mafia Boss Saw the Danger First—Then He Told the Waitress, “Stay Close and Call Me Your Husband.”

The Cathedral of St. John had been deconsecrated twenty years earlier. Its towering gothic spires rose above Providence like jagged black teeth, surrounded by an overgrown cemetery and crumbling stone walls.

It was the very church where Warren Halloway had married Rosalind’s mother thirty years before.

Inside Blackwood Manor, Rosalind stood in the center of the armory, staring at the decoded ledger and the bronze seal.

“We can’t give him the real ledger,” Rosalind said, her voice eerily calm, stripped of all panic. The desperate waitress was gone; the woman standing in the room was cold, calculating, and lethal.

Ambrose, strapped into a heavy tactical vest concealed beneath a tailored black wool coat, turned to look at her. “If we give him blank pages, he will kill Miles the moment he opens the cover.”

“He won't open it immediately,” Rosalind said, stepping to the workbench. “Salvatore Vane is arrogant, but he is superstitious. My father once bound a replica volume of the Syndicate charter using chemically unstable nitrocellulose parchment—it looks identical to eighteenth-century vellum, but the moment it is exposed to atmospheric moisture for more than ten minutes, it breaks down into a blinding phosphorus flare.”

Ambrose’s eyes widened. “Warren made a trap book?”

“My father knew who he was dealing with,” Rosalind said, her eyes flashing with diamond-hard resolve. “I will bring the replica. Inside the spine, I have embedded an active GPS beacon tied to Thomas’s satellite tracker.”

Ambrose stepped up to her, resting his hands on her shoulders. “You are not going in there, Rosalind. I will take the exchange.”

“He demanded both of us, Ambrose,” Rosalind said firmly, looking straight into his eyes. “If you show up alone, he will know it’s an ambush and pull the trigger on Miles instantly. We go together. We finish this together.”

Ambrose studied her face for five long seconds. He realized there was no force on earth that could keep this woman from fighting for her brother.

He reached into the weapons locker, pulled out a compact, ceramic-frame Glock 43, and pressed it into her hands.

“Concealed holster beneath your left arm,” Ambrose instructed, his voice low and deadly. “Safety is off. If Vane twitches toward that boy, you shoot to kill.”

Rosalind strapped the holster over her shoulder, putting on her dark trench coat over it. “I understand.”

At 1:45 PM, a single black sedan pulled up to the rusted iron gates of the Cathedral of St. John.

Rain fell in heavy, rhythmic sheets, hammering against the stained-glass windows of the ancient sanctuary. Ambrose and Rosalind walked through the towering oak doors into the cavernous nave.

Dust motes danced in the gloom. The smell of rotting wood, stale incense, and damp stone hung heavy in the air.

At the altar, standing beneath a massive, cracked stone crucifix, was Salvatore Vane.

Surrounding him were eight heavily armed mercenaries in full tactical gear, their assault rifles leveled at Ambrose and Rosalind.

To the right of the altar, strapped to the gurney, was Miles. His eyes were half-open, weak but conscious, watching his sister with terrified tears running down his cheeks.

“Rosalind...” Miles managed to choke out.

“Miles!” Rosalind called out, taking a step forward.

“Stay where you are!” Vane snarled, raising a silver revolver and pointing it directly at Miles’s head. “Hands where I can see them!”

Ambrose raised his hands slowly, his coat unbuttoned, showing an empty holster at his hip. “I came unarmed, Salvatore. Exactly as you asked. The guards are five miles back.”

Vane laughed—a harsh, grating sound that echoed off the vaulted ceiling. “You always were arrogant, Ambrose. You thought because your father wore the crown, you were untouchable. Look at you now. Kneeling in the dirt for an orphan and a cripple.”

“The ledger is here,” Rosalind interrupted, stepping forward with the leather-bound folio tucked beneath her arm and the bronze guild seal held in her gloved right hand. “Take it. Let my brother go.”

Vane gestured with his gun to his lieutenant. “Go get it. Inspect the seal.”

The lieutenant stepped down from the altar, snatched the heavy folio and the bronze seal from Rosalind’s hands, and brought them back to Vane.

Vane placed the bronze seal against the embossed depression on the leather cover.

It fit perfectly.

Vane greedily flipped open the heavy calfskin cover.

Inside, the pages were covered in intricate, calligraphic script—the chemical formulation that Rosalind had prepared.

“The accounts...” Vane whispered, his eyes widening with megalomaniacal greed. “Terminal seven... the Boston offshore trusts... it’s all here!”

“Now release Miles,” Rosalind demanded, her voice cutting through the sanctuary.

Vane looked up from the book, a cruel, mocking sneer twisting his face.

“Did you really think I’d let any of you leave this church alive?” Vane chuckled. “Once I walk out those doors with this book, the five families will crown me Don before midnight. And your bodies will burn in the furnace below, just like your father’s workshop.”

Vane raised his revolver toward Ambrose’s chest. “Goodbye, Ambrose.”

At that exact second, the chemical timer in the replica ledger reached zero.

The moisture from the humid rain air triggered the nitrocellulose binder.

A blinding, deafening phosphorus flare erupted directly in Salvatore Vane’s face!

A blast of pure white light and heat engulfed the altar. Vane screamed in absolute agony, dropping the book as the phosphorus burned through his hands and blinded his eyes.

“Fire!” Ambrose roared.

Before the mercenaries could recover their vision from the blinding flare, Ambrose dropped to one knee, pulled a backup weapon concealed in his boot, and fired three rapid shots, dropping two mercenaries instantly.

Rosalind drew the ceramic Glock from beneath her arm with lightning speed.

She didn't hesitate. She fired twice, striking the mercenary guarding Miles in the chest, dropping him to the flagstones before he could touch the gurney.

The cathedral erupted into a roaring warzone.

High above in the cathedral clerestory, the stained-glass windows shattered as Thomas and four elite Raldi snipers opened fire from the rafters, picking off the remaining mercenaries with suppressed, pinpoint precision.

Within thirty seconds, every mercenary was dead on the marble floor.

Salvatore Vane was crawling blindly across the altar steps, his face blistered and blackened from the flare, clawing at the stone, screaming in agony.

“My eyes! My eyes!”

Rosalind sprinted to the gurney, slashing Miles’s leather straps with a utility blade from her pocket. She threw her arms around her brother, pulling him to his chest. “Miles! You’re okay! You’re safe!”

Miles sobbed against her shoulder, clinging to her coat. “Rosalind... you came...”

Ambrose walked slowly up the altar steps toward Salvatore Vane.

His leather boots crunched on the shattered glass. He stood over the blinded mobster, his weapon lowered, his grey eyes cold as a winter grave.

“Ambrose...” Vane wept, raising his burned hands in pathetic surrender. “Please... have mercy. Under the old laws... under the charter...”

“The charter died the night you poisoned my father,” Ambrose said, his voice flat, emotionless, and absolute. “And the laws died the night you set fire to Warren Halloway’s life.”

Ambrose raised his weapon.

A single gunshot cracked beneath the vaulted ceiling of the Cathedral of St. John.