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.

The sun was just beginning to paint the Manhattan skyline in shades of gold and amber when the town car rolled back through the iron gates of the Hudson River brownstone.

I stepped out, my muscles aching with a familiar, bone-deep exhaustion, but for the first time in seven years, my chest felt completely clear. No tightness. No warnings from my heart. Just the steady, rhythmic pulse of a man who had finally settled his accounts with the past.

As I walked up the stone steps of the porch, the heavy oak front door opened.

Elena was standing there, wrapped in her shawl, pale morning light catching the dark circles under her eyes. She had been waiting all night.

"Vince?" she whispered, searching my face in the dim dawn light.

"It's over," I said, walking up the steps and pulling her into my arms.

She pressed her face against my shoulder, her body trembling slightly as the tension of the long, sleepless night finally drained out of her. "Are you hurt?"

"Not a scratch," I murmured, kissing the top of her head. "Salvatore is gone. The territory is secured. Nobody will ever bother us again."

A soft patter of footsteps echoed from the hallway behind her.

Lily appeared in her pink pajamas, rubbing her eyes with the back of her small hand, her blonde curls messy from sleep. She looked up at me, blinking away the sleepiness.

"Daddy?" she asked, her voice small and sweet. "Did you catch the bad guys?"

I knelt down, opening my arms, and the little girl ran straight into them, burying her face in my neck just like she had done on the Manhattan sidewalk three weeks ago.

I lifted her up, holding her close, feeling the steady, warm beat of her heart against mine.