I took three bullets saving the mafia boss’s six-year-old son—and when I woke up, his “reward” was five terrifying words: “You’re going to be my wife.”

Its velvet seats were torn. Its ceiling frescoes were cracked. Rain leaked through the roof and fell in silver threads across the stage where dead singers had once pretended tragedy.

Now real tragedy waited beneath the chandelier.

Victor entered first, unarmed in appearance, dressed in black. Alessia walked beside him, pale but upright. I followed with my cane, every step a negotiation with pain. Adriana had been ordered to stay behind.

Naturally, she was hidden in the second security van with Dante.

Romano women, I was learning, had a flexible relationship with orders.

Serafina Bellanti stood on the stage in a red coat.

She was younger than I expected, perhaps thirty, with golden hair and eyes too amused for someone holding a child hostage. Beside her stood Matteo Bellanti.

He was tall, elegant, and ruined by bitterness. His face had the strange calm of a man who had spent years rehearsing revenge in mirrors.

Leo sat in a chair between them.

His hands were tied, but his mouth was not taped.

The sight of him hit Victor like a physical blow.

“Daddy,” Leo whispered.

Victor stopped walking.

I saw the war inside him. The father wanted to run. The boss forced himself still.

Matteo smiled. “Impressive. You can learn.”

Alessia stared at him. “Let my son go.”

“Our son, for a while,” Matteo said softly.

Victor’s head turned.

Alessia looked sick.

Matteo laughed. “Not by blood. Don’t look so wounded, Romano. I simply raised him in stories while his mother recovered in my home.”

“You kept me drugged,” Alessia snapped.

“I kept you alive.”

“You kept me from my child.”

Matteo’s smile faded.

“And Victor kept you in a cage first. We all have flaws.”

Serafina clapped once lightly. “Family therapy is moving, but dawn is expensive. The ledger.”

Victor removed the black book from inside his coat.

My heart jumped.

He had found it.

Not in the toy chest. In the music box lining. Leo had hidden the real ledger where only someone gentle enough to open the broken toy would look.

Victor held it up.

Matteo’s eyes brightened with hunger.

“That book,” Victor said, “contains names of judges, police commanders, politicians, and businessmen my father bought over thirty years.”

“And murders,” Matteo added. “Do not forget the murders.”

Victor did not deny it.

“And if released,” Matteo continued, “it destroys the Romano empire.”

“Then take it,” Victor said.

He tossed the ledger onto the stage.

It landed near Leo’s feet.

Serafina moved to pick it up.

I saw her mistake before she did.

Leo looked at me.

I pressed one finger to my lips.

Our old signal.

His eyes changed.

He kicked the ledger hard.

It slid off the stage into the orchestra pit.

Serafina lunged after it.

At the same moment, the chandelier lights exploded—not from bullets, but from Victor’s men cutting power lines in sequence. Darkness swallowed the theater.

Chaos erupted.

Victor moved like a nightmare.

I heard Leo scream, then Alessia shouting his name. I dropped to my knees, pain tearing through me, and crawled toward the sound of his voice.

Someone grabbed my hair.

Serafina.

“You little maid,” she hissed.

I drove my cane into her ankle.

She cried out and fell.

I reached Leo’s chair. His hands were tied with plastic zip cuffs. I had no knife. No tool.

Then Leo turned his wrists.

A tiny piece of broken crayon was tucked in his sleeve—the same trick he used to peel candy wrappers in secret. He had been working the cuff for minutes.

“Good boy,” I whispered.

The cuff snapped loose.

I pulled him down just as a gunshot flashed from the balcony.

Matteo screamed.

Victor had him pinned against a column, one hand around his throat.

“You took my wife,” Victor growled.

Matteo choked out, “You lost her first.”

Victor raised his gun.

“Victor!” Alessia shouted.

He froze.

Alessia stood with Leo clutched against her, tears streaming down her face.

“Do not make him watch,” she said.