Chapter 1 - THE LITTLE GIRL WHO MADE HIM LAUGH
Dante Falcone slowly bent down until he was eye level with my daughter.
Every guard in the hallway looked horrified.
Sophia did not.
She wrapped both arms around his neck.
I nearly stopped breathing.
Dante froze.
Not because he was angry.
Because nobody touched him like that.
Not employees.
Not soldiers.
Not even the men who called him family.
For eighteen months, grief had turned the most feared man in the estate into a locked room.
My three-year-old had apparently decided locked rooms were boring.
“You’re not lonely now,” she announced.
Dante’s hands remained suspended awkwardly beside her tiny back.
Then, very slowly, he hugged her.
The entire hallway became impossibly quiet.
Sophia leaned against his shoulder.
“You smell like coffee.”
One guard coughed into his fist.
Dante almost smiled again.
“I drink coffee.”
“A lot.”
He looked toward me.
I wanted the marble floor to swallow me.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Falcone.”
He stood with Sophia still in his arms.
“Why?”
“She shouldn’t have followed you.”
Sophia gasped.
“But he needed company.”
Dante looked toward the locked sitting-room door.
Something in his face changed.
Then he asked:
“What’s your name?”
“Sophia.”
“Sophia what?”
“Bennett.”
His eyes moved to me.
“Your daughter?”
“Yes.”
“Her father?”
The question tightened something in my chest.
“Not in our lives.”
Dante studied me, but he didn’t press.
Instead, he set Sophia down.
Then she reached into her pocket.
“Oh!”
She pulled out the purple crayon.
Dante raised an eyebrow.
“What is that?”
“For you.”
He stared.
Sophia pushed the crayon into his hand.
“So you can draw when you’re sad.”
For a moment, the man who controlled half the city stared at a three-inch piece of wax as though it were something priceless.
Then he closed his fingers around it.
“Thank you.”
Sophia beamed.
I took her hand.
“We should go.”
Dante nodded.
But as we turned away, Sophia looked back toward Carmela’s locked sitting room.
“Why doesn’t the lady come out?”
My blood turned cold.
Nobody had told her about Carmela.
Dante went completely still.
“What lady?”
Sophia pointed toward the door.
“The pretty one.”
My heart began pounding.
“What pretty lady, sweetheart?”
“The one in the picture.”
I looked at Dante.
There were no photographs of Carmela in the hallway.
He crouched again.
“What picture?”
Sophia pointed toward the bottom of the locked door.
“There.”
A tiny corner of paper stuck out beneath it.
Dante stared.
Then he stepped forward and pulled it free.
It was an old photograph.
Carmela Falcone.
Smiling.
Standing beside a black car.
And next to her was a man I recognized immediately.
Victor Salerno.
Dante’s most trusted lieutenant.
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On the back, someone had written:
HE KNEW WHERE SHE WOULD BE AT FOUR.
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