A six-year-old girl saved a feared New York mafia boss after he collapsed on a Manhattan sidewalk, while everyone else stood back and watched. Three days later, he tracked the poor child to her sick mother in Queens, and froze when he saw the little girl’s eyes, because they were exactly like his.

Mount Sinai's private wing smelled of floor wax and expensive hand soap.

By midnight, Elena was resting in a room on the seventh floor, hooked up to IV drips and surrounded by machines that beeped in a soothing, rhythmic cadence. Three specialists had already examined her charts, whispering in the hallway before coming back in to give me their verdict.

"It's advanced pneumonia complicated by chronic pulmonary fibrosis," Dr. Kaplan told me, standing by the window of the private suite while Elena slept peacefully. "If she had stayed in that apartment another week, her lungs would have failed completely."

"Can you fix it?" I asked.

Kaplan looked at me over his glasses. "With experimental antibody therapy and round-the-clock care? Yes. But it won't be cheap, Mr. Moretti. And recovery will take months."

"Send the bill to my office. Double whatever the standard rate is if it buys her privacy."

"Done."

As Kaplan left, I walked over to the armchair where Lily was curled up. The little girl had finally fallen asleep, wrapped in a heavy wool blanket Marco had bought from an all-night boutique down on Lexington. Her blonde curls were splayed across the armrest, her small chest rising and falling in steady, peaceful rhythms.

The door clicked open softly. Marco stepped inside, holding a thick leather folder.

"Boss," Marco murmured, keeping his voice low so as not to wake the child. "We have a problem."

I stepped out into the carpeted hallway, pulling the heavy door shut behind me. "Talk."

"Salvatore heard you were moving people into Mount Sinai's private wing," Marco said, his face grim. "He's asking questions. He wants to know why the Chairman is spending half a million dollars on a woman from Queens."

Salvatore Grimaldi.

My primary rival within the commission. A vicious, ambitious animal who had been waiting three years for me to show a weakness, a chink in the armor, a woman or a child he could use as leverage.

"Let him ask," I said coldly.

"He thinks she's a mistress," Marco warned. "He thinks you're losing your edge. He's calling a sit-down for tomorrow night at the social club on Mulberry Street."

I stared down at my hands. For seven years, I had kept my personal life buried under six feet of concrete. No wife. No heirs. No soft spots. That was the only way to survive at the top of New York's underworld.

Now, the secret was out. Not just to Salvatore, but to the entire board.

"Tell Salvatore I'll be there," I said quietly.

"Boss—"

"And Marco?"

"Yeah?"

"Double the guards on this floor. Put four men outside Elena's door and two outside this suite. If anyone—anyone at all—so much as looks at this hallway the wrong way, you don't call me. You put them in the ground."

Marco nodded once, his expression hard as granite. "Consider it done."

I walked back into the room, pulling a chair up beside Lily's makeshift bed. I looked at the little girl's face, tracing the slope of her nose, the curve of her cheek—features that mirrored my own childhood photos locked away in a safe deposit box downtown.