Chapter 5
Miller stared at me for three long, unblinking seconds.
The amber light from the work lamp reflected off his dark pupils, rendering them completely opaque. For a split second, I didn't see a federal agent sworn to uphold the Constitution. I saw a man taking inventory of an enemy's fortress walls.
"Because bank accounts don't shoot back, Gianna," he said softly, putting his glasses back on. The frames cast sharp, geometric shadows over his cheekbones. "If we execute a raid against Don Patrizio Leoni while his subterranean defenses are active, forty federal marshals will walk into a meat grinder. We need his perimeter fail-safes down. We need his private armory offline. Do you understand?"
"I... I suppose so," I managed, looking down at my boots.
"Good girl," Miller said, patting my knee twice—a gesture that felt less like comfort and more like an owner checking a latch on a kennel. "Try to remember. Think about the study. Think about every time he touched a lock."
He stood up and walked back to the computer banks.
I watched his broad back, a cold weight settling over my chest.
*Think about every time he touched a lock.*
The memory rose unbidden, sharp and terrifyingly clear, cutting through the exhaustion that fogged my brain.
Three months ago, in November. The first major freeze of the winter.
I had come down with a violent, delirious fever. My lungs had burned with every breath, and by midnight, my vision had narrowed to fractured tunnels of shadow and fire. I had been convinced Patrizio had finally slipped arsenic into my tea—that he was finishing what he started when my father’s car burned on the bridge.
I remembered waking up in the dead of night, drenched in cold sweat, my teeth chattering so hard they ached.
Patrizio hadn't called a syndicate doctor to sedate me. He hadn't left me to rot in the dark.
He had been sitting on the edge of the mattress, his heavy wool overcoat discarded on the floor, the sleeves of his crisp white shirt rolled to his forearms. His dark hair was disheveled, his jaw shadowed with two days of thick, dark stubble. He was pressing a cold, lavender-scented washcloth against my forehead with hands that were impossibly gentle for a man who had broken bones with his bare fists.
I had tried to strike him. I had swung my fist with whatever pathetic strength I had left, catching him across the cheekbone.
He hadn't flinched. He hadn't retaliated.
He had merely caught my wrist mid-air, holding it firmly against his chest, right over the steady, thunderous beat of his heart. Through the thin cotton of his unbuttoned shirt, my knuckles had brushed against a thick, raised ridge of scar tissue running diagonally across his lower ribs—a fresh, jagged surgical seam held together by twenty-four rough stitches. It looked like the aftermath of an explosion. A wound that should have kept him in an ICU bed for three months, not sitting by my side changing cold compresses.
*“Don't touch me, you butcher!”* I had rasped, tears of helpless fury burning my eyes. *“Let me die! Just let me die like you let my father die!”*
Patrizio hadn't looked angry. His face had been pale, carved from stone and exhaustion, his slate eyes clouded with an emotion I couldn't decipher—something raw, wounded, and terribly, terribly old.
*“Call me whatever keeps the fire in you alive, Gianna,”* he had whispered, his deep baritone scraping low against the quiet of the bedroom. He had brought a silver cup of water to my lips, his hand steady even as mine shook. *“Hate me until your blood boils. But drink the water. You don't get to die in this house. Not while I draw breath.”*
He had stayed beside that bed until dawn. Every time I drifted into the fevered dark, I woke to find him there: an immovable sentinel between me and the shadows, refusing to sleep, watching my chest rise and fall with an intensity that bordered on madness.
And then there was the food.
Every single meal in that cavernous dining hall had been an ordeal. Patrizio sat at the head of the table, never allowing the waitstaff or the kitchen guards to place a plate directly before me. He would take my dish first, cut a piece of the meat or spoon a portion of the soup, eat it in front of me, and wait three minutes before sliding the porcelain across the mahogany.
I had hated him for it. I had believed it was his ultimate display of psychological dominance—a petty tyrant proving that even the bread I chewed belonged to him first.
Until the night in late January.
A junior chef from the Bronx crew had brought out a bowl of handmade tagliatelle with shaved black truffles. Patrizio had taken the silver fork, lifted a small bite to his tongue, and chewed once.
His entire frame had instantly locked into rigid, predatory stone.
He hadn't swallowed. He had spat the food into a linen napkin, stood up so violently his heavy oak chair crashed backward onto the marble floor, and swept my plate off the table with a roar of pure fury. The porcelain had shattered into a hundred jagged pieces against the hearth.
Before I could scream, Patrizio had dragged me behind him, shielding my body with his own, his Glock unholstered and leveled at the kitchen doors before the guards had even drawn their weapons. His hand—the hand holding my wrist—had been trembling.
*“Take the chef to the cellar,”* Patrizio had ordered in a voice so terrifyingly quiet the room temperature seemed to drop ten degrees. *“Check the supplier in Hunt's Point. If a single grain of that shipment reached the domestic pantry, execute the entire procurement line.”*
He had spent the rest of that night locked in his study. And the next morning, two guards who had overseen the pantry deliveries were quietly replaced by men Patrizio had personally brought over from Sicily—men who spoke no English, took no bribes, and stood outside my door with drawn shotguns twenty-four hours a day.
*Why would a man who wanted me dead test my food for poison?*
The thought struck me with the sudden, disorienting force of a physical blow.
I pressed my cold palms against my eyes, my head throbbing with a dull, sickening rhythm.
*No,* I told myself fiercely. *Stop it, Gianna. He's a monster. He murdered your father. He took your life. He kept you locked in a cage so you couldn't run to the authorities!*
Across the room, the technician suddenly cursed under his breath.
"Miller," the technician said, his fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard. "The root partition is encrypted with a three-layer rotating cipher. It’s not standard syndicate architecture. It’s an old NATO battlefield tactical suite."
Miller leaned over the screen, his jaw set in a hard, dangerous line. "Can you force the bypass?"
"Not from this node. If I attempt a brute-force decryption on the third partition, it triggers a dead-man's wipe on the primary drives. It’ll scorch the local sectors within five seconds." The technician looked up, his face pale under the monitor glow. "This drive isn't just an archive of his financial records. It’s the remote kill-switch for his regional defensive grid. It controls the automated blast doors, the cellular jammers, and the private fiber optic links to his security outposts across the valley."
