ella

ter was the sweetest s

ater swallowed his tailored suit. He gasped, choking on the very water that had stolen my Josie's fin

The memory of Don Damien Falcone's deep, rumbling voice echoed in the ho

aded my body and my dignity to the Devil of Chicago for a pathetic

remnants of the naive, obedient wife I had once been. "I swear it," I whispered to t

nto a searing, absolute white. The sound of splashing water vanished, replaced by a high-pitched ringing tha

reezing win

me, mingling with the heavy, expensive scent of aged whiskey and Cuban cigars. I blinked

ssive floor-to-ceiling window. Outside, the glittering skyl

and bleeding from the stone fountain. They were perfectly manicured, tre

28

ct winter night Hudson Higgins, a lowly Associate desperate for a seat at the table,

ed, growing heavy and charged with a dangerous, suffocating gravity.

mien F

dline. At thirty-two, he ruled the *Cosa Nostra* (Our Thing) with an iron fist and a heart of ice. He was a predator wr

ating heat of his massive frame behind me before he even touched

I had suffered in my past life-shot down my spine. My body instinctively

Isabe

kin. It was the voice that had haunted my memories, laced

in his gilded cage. But the woman standing here now was a mother who had held

the bile rising in my throat and leaned ba

wanted to use me to climb the ranks, I would use the Don's dark, twisted obsession with me to

g his pitch-black, predatory eyes

keeping my voice perfectly steady, playing the

tion. Tomorrow, my treacherous husband would undoubtedly want to celebrate his sickening t

ying the perfectly tamed wife, while I carefully w