Theee Mafia Boss Thought the Case Was Closed—Until a Flower Girl Found a Wiretap Near His Mother’s Bed

They didn't find Dr. Vance in the second-tier shipping office. They found him dead.

He sat in an executive swivel chair, his head slumped over a half-packed leather bag. An empty vial of potassium chloride lay on the desk beside his limp hand. A typed suicide note confessed to the systematic poisoning of Eleanor Gallagher, taking full blame and explicitly absolving Marcus of any knowledge or complicity.

“A cleanup job,” Walsh said, inspecting the body with latex-gloved hands. “They forced him to swallow it, typed the note, and left him here to be the scapegoat.”

Kent looked at the body for three seconds, then turned away. “Marcus thinks he’s clever. He eliminates his doctor, leaves a neat confession, and expects the police and the council to close the file tomorrow morning.”

“What do we do now?” June asked, shivering in the drafty office.

“We go home,” Kent said. “The final move isn't here on the docks. It’s at the estate.”

By midnight, they were back at the Gallagher mansion.

The house was dark, save for the glass conservatory on the third floor, where the moon shone through the glass panes, casting silvery lattices across the orchids, the ferns, and the deep green foliage.

Kent had dismissed the guards from the upper floor. He wanted quiet.

June stood by the potting bench, using an old porcelain basin to wash the dock grime from her hands. She had changed into an oversized cashmere sweater and soft wool trousers borrowed from Eleanor’s guest wardrobe. Her hair hung loose over her shoulders, curling softly around her neck.

Kent stood near the glass wall, a glass of single-malt scotch in his hand, staring out over the black canopy of the private woods toward the distant glow of the Chicago skyline. His coat was off, his white shirt unbuttoned at the throat, sleeves rolled up over his forearms.

“You should be sleeping,” he said without turning around.

“The plants need water,” June said softly, picking up a brass watering can. “Plants don't stop breathing just because their caretakers are gone.”

Kent turned slowly, watching her move among the foliage. There was an innate grace to her, an unstudied gentleness that seemed entirely alien to this house of cold marble and lethal bargains.

“My mother loved this room,” Kent murmured. “She said it was the only place in the city where things grew without demanding a payoff.”

June smiled faintly, touching the petal of a white moth orchid. “Your mother had good instincts. Plants are honest. If you give them poison, they die. If you give them light, they bloom. People are far more complicated.”

Kent walked over to her, his footsteps silent on the slate floor. He stopped beside the bench, setting his scotch down among the clay pots.

“You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met, June,” he said quietly.

June looked up, her breath hitching at the intensity in his gaze. “That’s because you only spend time with monsters and sycophants, Mr. Gallagher.”

“Kent,” he corrected her softly. “Say my name.”

June swallowed hard. “Kent.”

The sound of his name on her lips seemed to snap the remaining tension between them. Kent reached out, his fingers lightly brushing her jawline, moving toward the delicate curve of her ear. June didn't flinch. A shiver ran through her, warm and electric, pulling her toward him.

“Why didn't you run?” Kent whispered, his thumb resting gently on her lower lip. “When you had the chance at the cathedral. You could have asked Walsh to drive you to the station. You knew I would let you go.”

“I couldn't,” June whispered, her eyes searching his. “Because you were alone.”

Kent’s expression cracked—just for an instant, the granite facade shattering to reveal the bottomless grief and solitude of a man carrying an empire on his back while mourning the only person who had ever truly loved him.

“I’ve been alone for ten years, June,” he said, his voice thick with raw emotion.

“Not tonight,” she replied softly.

Kent stepped closer, his arm wrapping around her waist, pulling her flush against his chest. June gasped, her hands resting against the broad expanse of his chest, feeling the steady, powerful thud of his heart.

He leaned down, his lips hovering an inch from hers. “If you stay with me, June... Chicago will never look at you the same way again. They will call you the king's weakness. They will come for you.”

“Let them come,” June whispered, tilting her chin up. “As long as you’re standing between them and me, I’m not afraid.”

Kent kissed her.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was deep, possessive, hungry with years of buried hunger and desperate relief. June melted into his embrace, her fingers tangling in his dark hair, pulling him closer as the scent of night-blooming jasmine and rain-soaked earth wrapped around them.