The mafia boss offered a shy waitress $10 million to translate an “impossible” journal—then her first sentence made the arms dealer reach for his gun.

My own face stared back at me.

Blonde hair pinned tightly. Black restaurant uniform. Eyes lowered as I carried groceries up the cracked stairs of my apartment building.

Someone had been watching me.

Not for minutes.

For days.

Maybe longer.

I felt cold all over.

Constantine’s expression did not change, but satisfaction sharpened the corners of his mouth.

Dominic held the photo between two fingers. “Explain.”

Marco, the translator, was pinned against the wall, his cheek crushed into dark blue wallpaper that probably cost more than my monthly rent.

“I didn’t know,” Marco gasped.

Dominic stepped closer.

“That answer has disappointed many men before you.”

Marco’s knees shook. “They said she was just a waitress. They said she might recognize some symbols from her father’s papers. They told me to make sure I failed tonight. That was all.”

My pulse beat hard in my ears.

“They?” Dominic asked.

Marco swallowed. “I never saw faces.”

Dominic looked at one of his guards.

The guard tightened his grip.

Marco cried out.

“Luca!” he blurted. “The message came through Luca Bellini.”

A murmur passed through Dominic’s men.

Even I knew that name.

Luca Bellini was not a waiter, not a driver, not some corner soldier. He was Dominic Russo’s right hand. The man who stood beside him in photographs. The man newspapers called his “business partner.” The man who smiled at charity galas while reporters pretended not to know what kind of empire paid for the champagne.

Dominic did not react.

That frightened me more than anger would have.

He simply turned toward Constantine.

“You came here to watch my own house collapse.”

Constantine lifted his wineglass. “I came here to discuss business.”

“You came here to confirm the girl.”

Constantine’s eyes moved to me. “And now I have.”

Dominic placed the photo on the table.

Then he looked at me.

“Read another page.”

I stared at him. “Now?”

“Especially now.”

My fingers shook as I opened the journal.

The code was not clean. It had layers. Some lines were written in Corsican dialect. Others used Soviet-era abbreviations. A third layer hid numbers inside religious phrases. My father had called that kind of cipher “a coffin with three locks.”

But I had watched him open coffins my entire childhood.

I read silently first.

Then I stopped.

Dominic noticed. “What?”

“This isn’t just a ledger.”

“What is it?”

“A map.”

Constantine’s glass paused halfway to his mouth.

I turned the book so Dominic could see, though I doubted the symbols meant anything to him.

“These repeated marks are locations. Not names. Not accounts. Locations. Safe houses. Storage sites. Meeting points.”

Dominic leaned in.

“And this?” he asked, pointing to a line near the bottom.

I translated slowly.

“Blue chapel. Ten tonight. Final witness transferred.”

Dominic’s face hardened.

One of his men muttered a curse.

“What witness?” I asked.

Dominic did not answer.

But Constantine smiled.

The room seemed to shrink around us.

Dominic took out his phone and made one call.

“Blue Chapel. Now. Take men you trust. No one from Luca’s crew.”

Then he hung up and looked at me.

“You’re coming with me.”

I shook my head. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Amelia—”

“My mother is in a hospital bed in Queens. I have rent due in nine days. I have a life.”

“You had a life,” Dominic said. “Then your face appeared in a traitor’s envelope.”

I hated him for being right.

I hated my father for teaching me things that could get me killed.

I hated myself most because beneath all that fear was something worse.

A need to know.

My father had not died because he was tired and distracted and stepped into traffic. He had been “removed.” That word sat inside my skull like poison.

Constantine stood.

Dominic’s guards aimed their attention at him instantly.

“I assume our meeting is over,” Constantine said.

Dominic’s mouth curved without warmth. “No. You’re staying.”

Constantine chuckled. “You don’t have the authority to keep me.”

Dominic stepped close enough that the air changed.

“In this room, I have authority over the devil.”

For the first time, Constantine looked irritated.

Dominic nodded to his guards. “Take his phone. His men too.”

Constantine’s eyes landed on me again.

“You think he will protect you?” he asked.

I said nothing.

He leaned slightly closer.

“Your father thought the same.”

Before I could answer, Dominic shoved him back with one hand.

Not hard.

Just enough.

Enough to make every man in the room hold his breath.

“Mention her father again,” Dominic said, “and diplomacy ends.”

Ten minutes later, I was in the back of a black SUV with Dominic Russo beside me, the journal on my lap, and Manhattan streaking past the tinted windows.

I should have been crying.

Instead, I opened the book again.

Dominic watched me.

“What are you doing?”

“Reading.”

“You’re in shock.”

“I’m poor,” I said. “Shock has to wait.”

For the first time that night, something almost human touched his face.

Then his phone rang.

He answered.

The voice on the other end was frantic and loud enough for me to hear.

“Boss, Blue Chapel is empty. But there’s blood on the floor, and there’s a message carved into the altar.”