“This Marriage Is Just Business,” the Mafia Boss Said — Until the Mafia Honeymoon Became a Nightmare

“I do,” she lied.

It was a business transaction forged over lukewarm espresso and cold steel.

Anthony Romano made it clear the day he slid the diamond onto Natalie’s finger, love was a liability they couldn’t afford.

This was a merger of territories, a treaty sealed in white silk, nothing more.

But as the Tuscan sun set on their forced honeymoon, the illusion of control shattered.

Bullets don’t respect marriage certificates, and survival has a funny way of stripping bare the lies we tell ourselves.

Champagne always tasted like copper when you were drinking to your own life sentence.

Natalie Smith stood at the edge of the grand ballroom, letting the chaotic noise of forty drunken guests wash over her.

The heavy silk of her wedding gown felt less like a celebration, and more like a beautifully tailored straightjacket.

It dug into her ribs every time she took a breath.

Across the room, her new husband, Anthony Romano, was doing what he did best, commanding a room without raising his voice.

He stood near the ice sculpture, listening to an old caporegime from the Chicago outfit.

Anthony didn’t nod.

He didn’t smile.

He just absorbed the information, his dark eyes sweeping the perimeter of the room every few seconds.

It was a habit born of survival.

You didn’t become the head of the Romano syndicate at thirty-two by trusting the people who smiled at you.

“You look like you’re attending a wake, Natalie,” a raspy voice murmured over her shoulder.

Natalie didn’t flinch.

She turned slowly to face her father, Liam Smith.

He smelled of expensive cigars and cheap gin, a combination that had defined her childhood.

He adjusted the lapels of his tuxedo, offering her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

“I’m just tired, Dad,” she said.

Her voice was flat.

She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of a fight.

“Not tonight. You should be smiling,” Liam pressed, stepping closer.

“This is a good day. The ports are open to us now. The Romanos get our shipping lines. We get their political cover. It’s a perfect merger.”

“I’m glad my life translates so well to a spreadsheet,” Natalie replied, taking a slow sip of her drink.

Liam’s jaw tightened.

“Don’t get smart. You grew up in this life. You knew the tax would come due eventually. Anthony is a serious man. He won’t mistreat you unless you give him a reason to.”

Before Natalie could formulate a response sharp enough to cut through his arrogance, a shadow fell over them.

Anthony had crossed the room with a terrifying silence.

Up close he was a map of hard lines and exhaustion.

There were dark circles under his eyes, and the knot of his silk tie was perfectly rigidly symmetrical.

“Liam,” Anthony said.

It wasn’t a greeting.

It was an acknowledgement of existence.

“Anthony, I was just telling my daughter how beautiful she looks.”

“She looks exhausted,” Anthony corrected, his voice a low, gravelly baritone that left no room for debate.

“The photographer got what he needed. The Cappos have paid their respects. I’m taking her out the back.”

Liam looked like he wanted to argue, but he knew better.

He nodded stiffly, kissed Natalie on the cheek, a dry, obligatory scrape of stubble, and walked away to join his lieutenants.

Anthony turned to Natalie.

He didn’t offer his hand.

He just looked at her, really looked at her for the first time all evening.

“Can you walk in those shoes, or do we need to take the service elevator?” he asked.

“I can walk,” Natalie said.

“Good. Keep your head down. Let’s go.”

They navigated the service corridors of the hotel in silence.

The transition from the opulent music-filled ballroom to the harsh fluorescent-lit concrete hallways was jarring.

Kitchen staff flattened themselves against the walls as Anthony walked past.

They didn’t see a groom.

They saw the boss.

When they finally reached the idling black SUV in the alley, the cold Chicago air hit Natalie like a physical blow.

She shivered, wrapping her arms around her chest.

Anthony noticed, but he didn’t offer his jacket.

He simply opened the door for her.

As the SUV pulled away from the curb, sliding into the anonymous flow of city traffic, the silence in the cabin grew suffocating.

Natalie watched the street lights flicker across Anthony’s face.

He was already loosening his tie, staring at a phone that had materialized in his hand.

So Natalie broke the silence, her tone dripping with the cynicism she used as a shield.

“When do we consummate the merger? Do we sign a ledger afterward?”

Anthony stopped typing.

He slowly turned his head to look at her.

The street lights illuminated the faint, jagged scar that ran along his jawline.

“Let’s get one thing straight, Natalie,” he said, his voice stripped of any polite pretense.

“I didn’t want this wedding any more than you did. I don’t want a wife. I want the shipping routes your father controls.”

“Charming.”

“It’s honest,” Anthony countered.

He leaned back against the leather seat, running a hand over his face.

“This marriage is just business. You get my last name, a black card, and the protection of my family. I get your father’s infrastructure. We are going to Italy for two weeks because it’s expected. We’ll take a few photos for the people back home, but behind closed doors, we stay out of each other’s way. I won’t touch you. You don’t ask questions about my work. Understood?”

Natalie swallowed the lump forming in her throat.

She had expected this.

She had wanted this.

A cold, distant roommate was vastly preferable to a cruel husband.

Yet hearing it laid out so clinically still stung in a way she refused to analyze.

“Understood,” she said, turning her face toward the window.

“Good,” Anthony murmured, already looking back at his phone.

“Try to get some sleep. The plane leaves in three hours.”

The private jet hummed with a quiet, expensive vibration.

They were somewhere over the Atlantic, suspended in a dark void between the life they left behind and the performance they were about to begin.

Natalie had spent the first two hours of the flight in the small, polished bathroom, painstakingly peeling away the bride.

She unpinned the heavy veil, scrubbed the heavy makeup from her skin until her cheeks were red and raw, and wrestled her way out of the suffocating silk gown.

She replaced it with loose cashmere sweatpants and a gray sweater.

When she looked in the mirror, she recognized herself again.

Just Natalie, tired, trapped, but intact.

When she emerged into the main cabin, Anthony was exactly where she had left him.

He sat in a leather captain’s chair, a thick file open on his lap, a pair of reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.

He had discarded his suit jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white dress shirt, revealing forearms corded with muscle and faded ink.

He glanced up as she walked past, his eyes tracking her briefly before returning to his papers.

He didn’t say a word.

Natalie sank into a seat across the aisle, pulling her knees to her chest.

She stared out the window into the pitch black sky.

“There’s food in the galley,” Anthony said quietly, not looking up from his file.

“Or Leo can make you something.”

Leo Moretti, Anthony’s shadow and chief enforcer, was sitting in the front of the cabin, aggressively ignoring them while cleaning the parts of a disassembled handgun on a microfiber cloth.

“I’m not hungry,” Natalie said.

“Where exactly are we going? My father just said Italy.”

Anthony turned a page.

“Corsica.”

“Corsica is in France.”

“The estate is on the southern coast, right across the strait from Sardinia.”

Anthony explained, his tone conversational, but completely detached, like a tour guide reading from a brochure.

“It’s isolated, highly defensible. My grandfather bought it in the seventies. No one will bother us there.”

“Highly defensible,” Natalie repeated, testing the words.

“Is that a requirement for a honeymoon?”

Anthony finally closed the file, taking off his glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose.

The sheer exhaustion radiating from him was palpable.

For a split second, Natalie saw the man beneath the armor, someone carrying the weight of hundreds of lives, balancing precariously on a knife’s edge of loyalty and betrayal.

“In my line of work, it’s a requirement for breathing,” he said flatly.

“The Romanos have enemies. Your father has enemies. Now that we’re merged, we share them. The first few weeks after a structural shift like this are always volatile. People test the fences to see if the electricity is on.”

Natalie let out a dry, humorless laugh.

“So, we’re not going for the wine and the sunsets. We’re hiding.”

“We are securing our position,” Anthony corrected smoothly.

He stood up, towering in the confined space of the cabin, and walked over to a small wet bar.

He poured two fingers of scotch into a heavy glass.

He didn’t offer her one.

“You wanted honesty, Natalie. This is it. We stay at the villa. My men secure the perimeter. We let the dust settle in Chicago and then we go back.”

“And what am I supposed to do for two weeks in a fortress?”

Anthony took a slow sip of his drink.

“Read, swim, stare at the wall. I don’t care. Just don’t wander off the property.”

He walked back to his seat, effectively ending the conversation.

Natalie ground her teeth.

She had traded one cage for another.

Her father’s house had been a prison of expectations.

Anthony’s villa sounded like a literal one.

Twelve hours later, the jet touched down on a private airstrip carved into the rugged, sunbaked landscape of the Corsican coast.

The heat hit them the moment the cabin door opened, thick, dry, and smelling of sea salt and wild scrub.

Two armored SUVs were waiting on the tarmac.

Leo directed the local muscle, barking orders in rapid-fire Italian, while Anthony guided Natalie to the back of the lead vehicle.

The drive to the estate took forty minutes, winding along terrifying coastal cliffs that dropped hundreds of feet into the churning sapphire-blue Mediterranean.

Natalie felt a brief flicker of genuine awe.

It was brutally beautiful here.

Unforgiving.

The villa itself was less of a house and more of a compound.

High stone walls, wrought-iron gates, and security cameras at every conceivable angle.

Inside, it was vast and cold.

Terracotta floors, whitewashed walls, and heavy antique furniture that looked like it hadn’t been touched in decades.

“I’ll show you to your room,” Anthony said the moment they stepped into the grand foyer.

He was already checking his phone, his mind miles away.

“My office is down the left hall. Do not interrupt me unless the house is on fire.”

Natalie watched his back as he walked away, his heavy footsteps echoing in the cavernous space.

“This way, Mrs. Romano,” Leo said, his voice a low rumble.

Natalie flinched at the name.

She looked at the enforcer.

Leo was built like a tank with a broken nose and eyes that missed absolutely nothing.

“Just Natalie, please,” she said.

Leo didn’t smile, but a brief look of understanding passed through his dark eyes.

“Right this way, Natalie.”

Her bedroom was massive, complete with French doors that opened onto a private balcony overlooking the sea.

It was gorgeous.

It was lonely.

She dropped her bag on the floor, sat on the edge of the massive empty bed, and listened to the distant sound of the waves crashing against the rocks below.

This was her life now, just business.

By the third night, the silence of the villa had become a physical weight.

Natalie had established a routine of avoidance.

She woke up late, drank coffee on the terrace, and read paperbacks from the villa’s dusty library.

She only saw Anthony at dinner.

They sat at opposite ends of a long oak table, eating whatever the local cook prepared, speaking in monosyllables, if they spoke at all.

Pass the salt.

It’s raining.

Good night.

It was a masterclass in emotional quarantine.

The storm rolled in on Thursday evening.

It didn’t start with a drizzle.

It slammed into the coastline with violent, roaring intensity.

The wind howled against the heavy wooden shutters, and the rain lashed the glass like handfuls of gravel.

At two in the morning, Natalie was wide awake.

The air in her bedroom felt incredibly close, heavy with the changing barometric pressure.

She tossed the thin linen sheet aside and swung her legs out of bed.

The stone floor was freezing against her bare feet.

She pulled a silk robe over her shoulders and opened her bedroom door.

The hallway was pitch black.

The storm must have knocked out the main generator.

She navigated the corridor by memory, trailing her hand along the rough plaster wall to guide her towards the kitchen.

A glass of water.

That was all she needed.

She reached the top of the main staircase when she saw it.

A momentary flash of lightning illuminated the massive arched window above the front doors.

In that split second of harsh white light, Natalie saw a silhouette.

It was outside, pressed against the glass, holding something long and metallic.

Then the thunder cracked, a deafening boom that shook the floorboards.

Natalie froze, her breath hitched in her throat.

She had grown up around dangerous men.

She knew the posture of someone hunting.

That wasn’t a security guard doing a perimeter check.

She abandoned the kitchen, turning and sprinting silently down the left wing.

Anthony’s side.

She didn’t knock on his door.

She twisted the heavy brass handle and shoved it open.

“Anthony,” she started.

She stopped dead.

Anthony was out of bed.

He was standing in the dark by the window, peering through a small crack in the shutters.

In his right hand, a suppressed pistol was already drawn and leveled.

He wore dark sweatpants, his chest bare, his muscles tense like coiled wire.

He didn’t look at her, but he held up his left hand, signaling her to shut up.

“Get down,” he whispered.

His voice was completely devoid of panic.

It was terrifyingly calm.

Natalie dropped to her knees just as a muffled thack hit the window frame above her head.

Wood splintered, raining sharp fragments down onto the carpet.

Someone outside had a silencer.

“They cut the hard lines,” Anthony said, moving swiftly away from the window.

He grabbed a heavy tactical vest from the floor and threw it over his head, securing the Velcro with sharp, violent rips.

“The backup generator should have kicked in. Someone tampered with it.”

“Who is it?” Natalie asked, her voice trembling.

She pressed her back against the heavy mahogany dresser, pulling her knees to her chest.

“Does it matter right now?” Anthony snapped.

He ejected the magazine of his pistol, checked it in the dark by feel, and slapped it back in.

“Leo,” he barked into a small radio clipped to the vest.

Static hissed back.

Nothing else.

Anthony swore viciously under his breath.

“If Leo isn’t answering, they’re already inside the walls.”

He crossed the room in three long strides, grabbing Natalie by the upper arm and hauling her to her feet.

His grip was bruising, but she didn’t complain.

The heat radiating from his hand was the only grounding thing in the room.

“Listen to me,” Anthony said, his face inches from hers.

Even in the dark, she could see the lethal intensity in his eyes.

“We don’t know who bought out the guards. We don’t know how many there are. You stay behind me. If I stop, you stop. If I shoot, cover your ears and keep your head down. Do you understand?”

“This marriage is just business,” Natalie whispered, a hysterical edge creeping into her tone.

“Who sends a hit squad on a business trip?”

Anthony’s jaw locked.

For a fleeting second, the cold mafia boss fractured, and Natalie saw pure, unadulterated rage.

“Someone who wants a hostile takeover. Let’s move.”

He pulled her into the hallway.

The silence inside the house was worse than the storm outside.

It was pregnant, waiting.

They moved toward the rear stairwell, Anthony leading with the gun raised, scanning the dark with lethal precision.

They reached the landing when the heavy oak door at the bottom of the stairs blew inward with a deafening crash.

Flashlights cut through the dark, beams of blinding white light sweeping up the staircase.

“Contact!” a voice yelled in Italian from the bottom floor.

Anthony didn’t hesitate.

He pushed Natalie hard against the wall, stepped into the open, and fired three times.

The muffled cough of his weapon was followed instantly by a heavy thud at the base of the stairs.

One flashlight clattered to the floor, rolling wildly.

“Go up,” Anthony roared, grabbing Natalie’s robe.

They scrambled backward, retreating up the stairs as a hail of gunfire tore through the space where they had just been standing.

Plaster and drywall exploded in powdery clouds, filling the air with the sharp, acidic smell of cordite.

A bullet whizzed past Natalie’s ear, sounding like an angry hornet, and embedded itself in the antique portrait behind her.

Anthony shoved her through the nearest doorway, the library, and kicked the heavy door shut, slamming the deadbolt home.

“They have rifles,” Anthony breathed heavily, pressing his back against the wood.

“We can’t hold this room.”

Natalie’s hands were shaking so violently she couldn’t clasp them together.

“Where do we go? We’re on the second floor.”

Anthony didn’t answer.

He walked to the massive stone fireplace at the end of the room.

He reached his hand up inside the soot-stained chimney, groping for something.

A loud metallic click echoed in the room.

He pushed hard against the left side of the brickwork.

With a grinding scrape of stone on stone, a narrow panel groaned open, revealing absolute darkness.

“Grandpa was paranoid,” Anthony muttered, grabbing Natalie’s hand.

“Get in.”

Natalie hesitated, staring into the pitch-black void.

“Where does it go?”

A heavy barrage of bullets hit the library door, splintering the oak.

The deadbolt groaned.

“Does it matter?” Anthony yelled over the noise.

He shoved her into the dark passage and squeezed in behind her, pulling the stone door shut just as the library doors burst open.

The immediate silence in the tunnel was ringing.

It smelled of damp earth, rust, and old stone.

Natalie stood in the pitch black, her chest heaving, the reality of the situation finally crashing down on her.

The money, the status, the careful rules they had laid out.

None of it meant anything down here.

They were trapped like rats in a wall.

Anthony flicked on a small penlight.

The beam illuminated the cramped, steep stone stairs leading down into the earth.

He turned the light onto his own face, then down to Natalie.

She looked down and let out a choked gasp.

Anthony’s left arm was soaked in crimson.

The dark blood was dripping steadily off his fingertips, pooling on the dusty stone floor.

He looked at the wound with vague annoyance, then looked up at Natalie.

The cold, impenetrable mask was gone.

In the flickering light of the narrow tunnel, they were no longer a boss and a pawn.

They were just two people bleeding in the dark.

“Looks like the honeymoon is over,” Anthony said softly.

Cold stone bit into Natalie’s bare feet as they descended.

Anthony moved with a staggering, singular focus, his broad shoulders scraping against the damp, narrow walls of the tunnel.

He didn’t speak.

The only sounds in the suffocating blackness were the harsh, rhythmic rasp of his breathing and the soft, wet patter of crimson drops hitting the stairs behind him.

They spiraled downward for what felt like hours, though Natalie knew it could only be minutes.

The air grew stale, heavy with the scent of wet limestone and decades of undisturbed rot.

Above them, the muffled echoes of gunfire and shouting faded into a dull, distant vibration.

They were deep underground.

Anthony’s pace finally faltered.

He hit a flat landing and stumbled, his right hand shooting out to brace against the rough wall.

The penlight clattered from his grip, rolling across the uneven floor and projecting wild, spinning shadows before coming to a rest against a heavy wooden door.

Natalie lunged for the light.

She scooped it up and aimed the beam at her husband.

He was leaning heavily against the stone, his eyes squeezed shut, his jaw clamped so tight the muscle fluttered furiously beneath his skin.

The tactical vest hung loose over his chest, but it was his left arm that demanded attention.

It was a mess.

“Sit down,” Natalie ordered.

Anthony opened his eyes, glaring at her through a haze of pain.

“We need to keep moving. This tunnel dumps out three miles south near the old smuggler’s cove. If they find the switch in the fireplace—”

“If we keep moving, you’re going to pass out from blood loss in ten minutes,” Natalie snapped.

Her voice was terrifyingly steady.

It surprised even her.

Panic was a luxury she couldn’t afford down here.

“Sit down, Anthony. Now.”

He stared at her for a fraction of a second, registering the iron in her tone.

Without another word, he slid down the wall, his long legs sprawling out in front of him on the dirty floor.

Natalie dropped to her knees beside him.

She set the penlight on a protruding brick to illuminate them, then reached for his arm.

He flinched instinctively, a wild, cornered animal look flashing in his eyes before he forced himself to go completely still.

“Let me see,” she murmured.

She peeled back the heavy blood-soaked fabric of his sweatpants where he had tried to press his hand against the wound.

The bullet had caught him clean through the bicep.

It was a brutal, jagged tear, but it hadn’t shattered the bone.

“Through-and-through,” Natalie said, her fingers working quickly.

“You’re lucky.”

“Thrilled,” Anthony rasped, tipping his head back against the cold stone.

“Do you know what you’re doing, or are you just playing nurse?”

“I grew up in the Smith house, Anthony. My father used to bring his lieutenants into the kitchen to dig buckshot out of their legs so he wouldn’t have to bribe a doctor. Hold still.”

She didn’t hesitate.

Natalie grabbed the collar of her expensive silk robe, the one she had packed for a honeymoon that never existed, and tore it violently.

The sharp sound of ripping fabric echoed in the small space.

She tore off a long, thick strip, wadded up a smaller piece, and pressed it directly into the bullet hole.

Anthony hissed, his entire body going rigid.

His right hand shot out, wrapping around her wrist in a vice grip.

“Don’t,” Natalie warned softly, looking directly into his eyes.

“I have to apply pressure.”

They stayed frozen like that, the mafia boss and the pawn.

Anthony’s grip on her wrist was hard enough to leave bruises.

Yet, he didn’t pull her hand away.

He just stared at her.

Stripped of his suits, his compound, and his soldiers, he looked impossibly young.

The cynical, untouchable facade was bleeding out onto the floor, leaving behind something raw and dangerous.

“Who knew about the backup generator?” Natalie asked, keeping her hands firmly pressed against his arm.

She needed him talking.

She needed him focused on a problem, not the pain.

Anthony’s breathing hitched, then leveled out.

He released her wrist, letting his hand drop heavily to his lap.

“Only my inner circle. Leo, the head of security, the estate manager.”

“So, an inside job.”

“It always is.”

Anthony let out a bitter, exhausted laugh.

“Your father was right. We merged the families and we just inherited each other’s vipers.”

“Do you think Leo is dead?” Natalie asked quietly.

The big enforcer had been intimidating, but he had been Anthony’s shadow for a decade.

Anthony looked away, staring into the impenetrable darkness of the tunnel ahead.

“If Leo is dead, we’re in trouble. If Leo is alive, we’re in worse trouble.”

Natalie finished binding the wound, pulling the silk strip tight, and tying off with a brutal, efficient knot.

Anthony grunted, but didn’t complain.

She wiped her bloody hands on the remaining fabric of her robe.

“It’ll hold,” she said, sitting back on her heels.

“But we need real bandages and antibiotics.”

“And a way off this island.”

Anthony pushed himself away from the wall, using his good arm to lever his weight up.

He swayed for a second, catching his balance.

He looked down at his arm wrapped in torn white silk.

Then he looked at Natalie.

She was covered in dirt, her bare feet black with grime, her hands stained red.

He bent down and picked up his pistol from where he had dropped it.

He checked the chamber with one hand, sliding it smoothly back into his waistband.

“Thank you,” he said.

It was barely a whisper, gravelly and reluctant, but it was there.

“It’s just business, Anthony,” Natalie replied, her tone deliberately flat.

She stood up, shivering as the cold dampness of the tunnel finally seeped into her bones.

“You die, I lose my protection. Let’s get out of this hole.”

Rainwater seeped through a rusted iron grate overhead, dropping icy beads onto the back of Natalie’s neck.

They had walked for another grueling hour through the subterranean passage.

The air had steadily grown fresher, trading the smell of crypt dust for the sharp, salty tang of the Mediterranean Sea.

Now they stood at the end of the line.

A set of rusted metal rungs led up a narrow concrete shaft to a heavy grate concealed somewhere in the dense Corsican wilderness.

“Can you climb?” Natalie asked, looking back at Anthony.

He looked terrible.

The bleeding had slowed to a dark, sticky seep, but his skin was the color of old ash, and a fine sheen of sweat coated his forehead.

Fever was already knocking at the door.

“I don’t have a choice,” he muttered.

Natalie went first.

She climbed the rusted ladder, her frozen fingers aching as she gripped the cold metal.

When she reached the top, she pressed her shoulders against the heavy iron grate and pushed.

It didn’t budge.

Panic flared in her chest.

She pushed harder, gritting her teeth, her bare feet slipping on the wet rungs.

Below her, Anthony reached up with his good arm.

He planted his hand squarely on the small of her back, lending her his fading strength.

“On three,” he ordered softly.

“One, two, three.”

They shoved together with a horrific grinding screech of rusted hinges.

The grate broke free from decades of earth and vines, flipping backward into the mud.

Natalie scrambled over the edge, rolling into the soaking wet brush.

The storm had broken, leaving behind a miserable, steady drizzle and a biting wind.

She lay on her back for a second, just breathing in the open air before leaning back over the hole.

She grabbed Anthony’s tactical vest, hauling him up over the lip of the concrete shaft.

He collapsed onto the wet ground, breathing heavily.

They were in the middle of nowhere.

Dense, thorny scrubland.

The famous maquis of Corsica surrounded them in every direction.

Far below, barely visible through the morning mist, the angry ocean slammed against a rocky beach.

There was no sign of the villa, no sign of civilization, just endless gray wilderness.

“Where exactly are we?” Natalie asked, pulling her ruined robe tighter around her shoulders.

She was freezing.

Anthony pushed himself up to a sitting position.

He scanned the horizon, his eyes narrowing as he got his bearings.

“Smuggler’s cove is down there. There’s a structure hidden in the rocks. My grandfather used it to move untaxed cigarettes in the eighties. There should be a boat if the rot hasn’t taken it.”

“And if it has?”

“Then we learn to swim to Sardinia,” he said dryly.

The descent to the cove was brutal.

The sharp rocks and thorny bushes tore at Natalie’s bare feet and legs, slicing thin red lines into her calves.

Every step was an exercise in misery, but she didn’t stop, and she didn’t complain.

She kept checking over her shoulder, making sure Anthony was still moving.

He trailed a few paces behind, leaning heavily on the rocky outcrops, his face a grim mask of endurance.

It took them forty minutes to navigate the steep cliffside.

By the time they reached the rocky shore, the sky was beginning to lighten into a bruised, dreary purple.

Tucked away in a natural cavern formed by overlapping boulders was a small, dilapidated boathouse.

The corrugated tin roof was rusted red, and the wooden doors were covered in green moss.

It looked abandoned.

Anthony walked past her, his hand resting on the grip of his pistol.

He kicked the wooden door.

It gave way easily, sagging inward on rotted hinges.

Inside, it smelled of gasoline and decaying wood.

Dominating the small space was a sleek, dark gray zodiac boat sitting on a rusted cradle.

It was covered in a heavy tarp, but it looked surprisingly intact.

Along the back wall sat a wooden workbench cluttered with old tools and several heavy military-style lockboxes.

Anthony staggered past the boat, making a beeline for the lockboxes.

He popped the latch on the first one.

It was empty.

He cursed under his breath, leaning his weight heavily on the bench.

“Anthony,” Natalie said, stepping fully into the shed.

“Sit down before you fall down.”

He ignored her, fighting the latch on the second box.

It popped open.

Inside was a thick layer of dust covering several sealed plastic bags.

Anthony ripped one open with his teeth.

“Cash,” he muttered.

He tossed the bag onto the bench.

He opened another.

“Passports. Clean.”

He slumped against the wall, sliding down until he hit the wooden floorboards.

He let out a long, ragged exhale, staring at the ceiling.

The adrenaline was finally leaving his system, leaving behind nothing but trauma and exhaustion.

Natalie walked over to the boxes.

She dug past the money and the fake passports, finding a heavy canvas bag at the bottom.

She unzipped it.

Inside was a basic trauma kit, vacuum-sealed alongside two pairs of heavy wool socks and a folded woolen blanket.

She turned around.

Anthony was watching her, his dark eyes unreadable.

“Take the money, Natalie,” he said quietly.

His voice sounded thin, far away.

She froze.

“What?”

“Take the cash. Take a passport. There’s fuel in the corner. If you can get the zodiac into the water, you can make the Italian coast in three hours. Call your father when you land. He’ll pull you out.”

Natalie stared at him.

She looked at his pale face, the bloody silk wrapped around his arm, the heavy bags under his eyes.

This was the man who had bought her.

This was the monster her father had warned her about, the ruthless king of the Chicago underworld.

And he was sitting on a dirty floor telling her to leave him behind.

“And what about you?” she asked.

“I’ll slow you down,” Anthony said simply.

It wasn’t self-pity.

It was cold tactical calculus.

“Whoever hit the villa knows I’m bleeding. They’ll have dogs sweeping the scrub by sunrise. I stay here. I create a bottleneck. I hold them off. You run.”

Natalie stood perfectly still.

She looked at the money on the bench.

It was a ticket out.

A ticket away from her father, away from the mafia, away from this cold, terrifying man who had dragged her into a war.

She walked over to the bench.

She picked up the thick stack of euros.

Anthony closed his eyes, resting the back of his head against the wooden wall.

He accepted it.

Natalie turned around, walked over to Anthony, and threw the stack of cash directly into his lap.

He opened his eyes, startled.

“I am not leaving you,” Natalie said, her voice dropping an octave, ringing with an authority she didn’t know she possessed.

She dropped the woolen blanket over his shoulders and knelt beside him, ripping open the vacuum-sealed trauma kit.

“Natalie, be smart,” Anthony warned, his brow furrowing.

“This isn’t a game.”

“I know exactly what this is,” she fired back, pulling a bottle of iodine and a roll of gauze from the kit.

“If I run back to my father, I’m just a pawn waiting to be traded again. You said this marriage was business. Well, consider me an investor. I’m not leaving my primary asset bleeding out in a shack. We leave together or we die in here.”

Anthony stared at her.

The hardened, cynical walls he had built around himself for thirty years cracked just a fraction.

He looked at the fierce determination burning in her tired eyes.

A slow, grim smile touched the corner of his mouth.

“All right, partner,” Anthony whispered.

“Patch me up.”

Iodine burned like liquid fire.

Natalie uncapped the brown plastic bottle, and the sharp chemical scent immediately overpowered the smell of rotting seaweed inside the shack.

She looked down at Anthony.

He had stripped off the heavy tactical vest, tossing it onto the floorboards with a dull thud.

His chest was covered in a cold sweat, his skin carrying a grayish pallor that terrified her more than the bullet hole itself.

“This is going to hurt,” she said.

Her hands were shaking again.

She willed them to stop.

“Just do it,” Anthony grunted, bracing his head back against the wooden wall.

He closed his eyes.

Natalie untied the ruined silk of her robe.

The makeshift bandage was entirely soaked through, heavy and stiff.

As she peeled it away, fresh crimson welled up from the jagged tear in his bicep.

She didn’t give herself time to think.

She upended the bottle of iodine directly over the wound.

Anthony’s entire body went rigid.

A low, feral sound ripped from his throat, and his right hand slammed flat against the floorboards, fingers curling like claws into the rotting wood.

He didn’t pull away.

He rode the blinding wave of agony.

His jaw locked so tight Natalie thought his teeth might shatter.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice cracking.

“Keep going,” he forced out through his teeth, his chest heaving.

“Wrap it tight. Don’t worry about being gentle.”

She grabbed the sterile gauze pad from the trauma kit, pressing it hard into the torn muscle, then began winding the thick medical tape around his arm.

She pulled it viciously tight, prioritizing pressure over comfort.

When she finished, she secured the end and sat back on her heels, gasping as if she were the one who had just been patched up.

Anthony slowly opened his eyes.

He looked at the stark white bandage, then up at Natalie.

Her face was streaked with dirt and dried rain.

She looked nothing like the icy, untouchable heiress he had married three days ago.

“You have a terrible bedside manner,” he rasped, a ghost of a smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth.

“File a complaint with HR,” Natalie shot back, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.

She turned her attention to the massive gray zodiac boat taking up the center of the room.

“How heavy is that thing?”

Anthony forced himself upright, using the workbench for support.

He swayed dangerously for a moment.

“Heavy enough, but it’s on a rusted roller track. If we knock the chocks loose, gravity should do the rest. The ramp leads straight down into the water.”

Natalie walked over to the wooden blocks wedged beneath the boat’s trailer.

She kicked the first one.

It didn’t move.

She grabbed a heavy rusted wrench from the floor and swung it like a hammer, smashing it against the wood.

The block splintered and shifted.

She hit it again harder, this time letting out a frustrated yell.

The block flew sideways.

Anthony watched her.

He had spent his entire life surrounded by people who did what they were told because they feared him.

Natalie wasn’t acting out of fear.

She was acting out of pure stubborn defiance.

It was a terrifyingly attractive quality.

“Check the fuel line,” Anthony ordered, limping toward the rear of the boat.

“There should be two red portable tanks strapped near the transom. Make sure the primer bulb isn’t cracked.”

Natalie climbed over the slick rubber pontoon, her bare feet finding purchase on the fiberglass deck.

She found the tanks.

She squeezed the rubber primer bulb.

It was stiff, but it held pressure.

“It feels solid.”

“Good.”

Anthony grabbed the winch handle at the front of the trailer with his good arm.

Then they heard it.

A high, sharp sound cut through the noise of the crashing waves outside.

It was faint, carried on the bitter morning wind, but it was unmistakable.

Dogs.

They were barking, a frantic, overlapping chorus echoing down the cliffside.

Anthony’s head snapped toward the shattered door.

The color drained completely from his face.

“They found the tunnel exit.”

“How long do we have?” Natalie asked, jumping down from the boat.

“Ten minutes, maybe less if they let the hounds off the leash.”

Anthony gripped the wrench Natalie had dropped.

He hobbled over to the second wooden chock.

“Get behind the boat. When I knock this loose, push with everything you have. We need momentum to break through the lower doors.”

Natalie wedged her shoulder against the cold rubber of the bow.

She dug her bare toes into the grimy floorboards.

Anthony swung the wrench.

Metal connected with wood in a deafening crack.

The chock gave way.

The heavy zodiac lurched forward, the rusted steel rollers screaming in protest.

Natalie shoved, digging her heels in, her muscles burning.

Anthony dropped the wrench and threw his weight against the side, his boots slipping on the wet floor.

The boat rolled down the slight incline of the track.

It picked up speed, a ton of rubber and fiberglass hurtling toward the closed double doors at the end of the boathouse.

“Get in,” Anthony yelled.

He grabbed the side rope and hauled himself over the pontoon, tumbling onto the deck.

Natalie sprinted behind the boat, throwing her upper body over the transom just as the bow rammed the rotting wooden doors.

Wood exploded outward.

The boat launched off the end of the ramp, hitting the icy Mediterranean water with a massive splash.

Natalie slid backward, half in the water, the freezing ocean instantly soaking her to the bone.

Anthony grabbed the collar of her sweater, hauling her violently into the boat before the current could drag her under.

“Hold on,” he roared.

He didn’t bother with the steering wheel.

He scrambled to the massive outboard motor, grabbing the pull cord with his right hand.

He yanked it.

The engine sputtered, coughed, and died.

Up on the cliff, the barking grew louder.

A flashlight beam swept across the rocks above them.

“Anthony,” Natalie pleaded, her teeth chattering uncontrollably.

He set his jaw, planted his foot against the transom, and ripped the cord backward with terrifying force.

The outboard roared to life, a deep, guttural mechanical scream that drowned out the ocean.

Anthony threw it into gear.

The propeller bit into the water, and the zodiac shot forward, tearing out of the cove just as three men carrying rifles emerged onto the rocky beach behind them.

Gunfire popped, but the sound was swallowed by the engine and the distance.

Small geysers of water erupted in their wake.

They were too far out.

Natalie collapsed onto the wet fiberglass floor, wrapping her arms around her knees, violently shivering.

She looked back.

The shoreline of Corsica was already shrinking, disappearing into the gray morning mist.

Waves battered the rubber hull with the force of concrete walls.

The Mediterranean was furious.

The storm had passed, but it had left behind a violently churning sea.

The zodiac climbed massive gray swells, hanging suspended in the air for a sickening second before slamming down into the troughs.

Every impact sent a jarring shockwave up Natalie’s spine.

Anthony was at the center console, gripping the stainless steel steering wheel with his right hand.

He stood with his legs spread wide, absorbing the brutal motion of the boat, his eyes fixed on a digital compass mounted to the dash.

He looked like a ghost.

His lips were blue, his skin ashen, and the white bandage on his arm was already seeping red again.

Natalie crawled forward, keeping her center of gravity low.

The wind whipped her wet hair across her face, stinging her eyes.

She grabbed the metal rail of the console and pulled herself up beside him.

“Let me drive,” she yelled over the roar of the engine.

Anthony didn’t look at her.

“I’ve got it.”

“You’re falling over, Anthony. Your grip is slipping. You need to sit down before you pass out and pitch backward over the engine.”

She reached out and placed her hand directly over his on the wheel.

“Give it to me.”

He slowly turned his head.

His dark eyes were glassy, fighting a losing battle against shock and blood loss.

He looked at her hand, small and pale, covering his.

He nodded once, a sharp, jerky motion.

Anthony stepped back, letting Natalie take the wheel.

He collapsed heavily onto the small cooler strapped beneath the console, pulling his knees up and resting his head against the fiberglass.

“Keep the heading at 140,” he muttered, his voice barely audible over the wind.

“Don’t fight the swells. Angle into them.”

Natalie tightened her grip on the wheel.

The power of the boat was terrifying.

She angled the bow into the next massive wave, feeling the engine strain, then eased off the throttle as they crested, sliding down the back of the swell.

It took immense physical effort to keep the boat straight.

Her shoulders burned, and her blistered, freezing feet slipped on the wet deck.

For two hours they existed in a violent, wet purgatory.

There was nothing but gray water and gray sky.

Natalie kept her eyes locked on the compass, occasionally glancing down at Anthony.

He had stopped moving entirely.

His chin rested on his chest, his breathing shallow and rapid.

Panic, cold and sharp, began to gnaw at the edges of her focus.

If he died on this boat, she was adrift.

Not just literally, but in the world they inhabited.

Without Anthony Romano, Natalie Smith was a vulnerability, a loose end.

“Anthony,” she called out, kicking his boot gently.

He didn’t respond.

“Anthony, wake up!”

She kicked him harder.

He flinched, his head snapping up.

He blinked, struggling to focus on her.

“Look.”

Natalie pointed forward.

Through the haze of the sea spray, a dark, jagged shape broke the horizon.

Land.

The northern coast of Sardinia.

Anthony forced himself up, leaning heavily against the console.

He squinted at the shoreline.

“Cut the throttle,” he coughed.

“There’s a bay. Look for a rusted crane structure on the left side of a rocky peninsula. Steer for that.”

Natalie pulled back on the throttle.

The deafening roar of the engine dropped to a low, throaty burble.

The silence was sudden and deafening.

She navigated the boat slowly through a narrow channel between two massive granite outcroppings.

The water inside the bay was startlingly calm, sheltered from the violent currents of the strait.

Tucked into the curve of the shoreline was a small, dilapidated fishing dock.

A weathered wooden shack sat fifty yards back from the water, partially hidden by ancient olive trees.

Natalie cut the engine entirely as they drifted towards the dock.

The bow bumped gently against the old tires nailed to the wood.

She grabbed a dock line and scrambled over the side, tying them off to a rusted cleat.

She turned back to the boat.

Anthony was trying to climb over the pontoon.

He managed to get one leg over before his strength simply evaporated.

He slumped forward, half hanging over the side of the boat.

Natalie ran to him.

She wrapped her arms around his waist, taking his weight, and dragged him onto the wooden planks.

He groaned, a deep, miserable sound, and sank onto his knees.

“We made it,” Natalie breathed, her hands resting on his shoulders.

“Where do we go now? Who is here?”

Anthony looked up at her.

The cynical mafia boss was completely gone, stripped away by the sea and the blood loss.

He looked incredibly fragile.

“The shack,” he whispered.

“Knock three times. Wait. Knock twice. Ask for Lorenzo.”

“Who is Lorenzo?”

“An old friend. He owes my father his life.”

Anthony swayed, his eyes rolling back slightly.

“Tell him the Chicago ledger is open. He’ll understand.”

He pitched forward.

Natalie caught him, lowering him gently until he was lying flat on the wooden dock.

He was completely unconscious.

Natalie knelt there for a moment, the silence of the hidden bay pressing in on her.

She looked at her husband.

Then she looked at her own hands.

They were raw, blistered, and stained with his blood.

The terrified bride from the Chicago ballroom was dead, washed away somewhere in the Corsican Strait.

She stood up.

She smoothed down her ruined gray sweater, lifted her chin, and walked barefoot up the dirt path toward the shack.

It was time to collect a debt.

The dirt path was choked with weeds and crushed seashells.

Natalie’s bare, bleeding feet left faint red smudges on the pale stones as she walked.

She reached the weathered wooden door of the shack.

It looked abandoned.

The windows were boarded over with thick salt-stained plywood.

She raised her bruised fist.

Knock, knock, knock.

She waited.

The wind howled through the olive branches overhead.

Knock, knock.

A full minute passed.

The silence stretched until it felt like a physical weight.

Natalie was just turning around, panic finally starting to claw its way up her throat, when the heavy deadbolt slid back with a loud metallic clack.

The door cracked open.

The rusted barrel of a twelve-gauge shotgun protruded from the darkness, leveled directly at her chest.

“We don’t buy anything,” a voice rasped in heavily accented English.

Natalie didn’t flinch.

She stared down the barrel, her exhaustion burning away the last remaining shreds of her fear.

“I’m looking for Lorenzo. The Chicago ledger is open.”

The shotgun wavered.

The door opened wider, revealing a man in his late sixties.

He had skin like cured leather, a thick shock of white hair, and eyes that held the hard, flat look of a man who had spent his life burying secrets.

He looked at Natalie, at her wet, matted hair, her ruined clothes, her bloody hands.

“Where is he?” Lorenzo asked.

“On the dock. He’s bleeding out.”

Lorenzo didn’t ask another question.

He lowered the shotgun, grabbed a canvas medical bag from the floor by the door, and pushed past her.

He moved with surprising speed for a man his age.

Natalie followed him back to the water.

Anthony hadn’t moved.

He lay face down on the wooden planks, the tide gently rocking the zodiac beside him.

Lorenzo knelt, pressing two rough fingers to the side of Anthony’s neck.

“Pulse is thready,” the old man muttered.

He looked up at Natalie.

“Grab his feet.”

Together, they hauled Anthony’s dead weight up the incline and into the shack.

The interior was not a fisherman’s hovel.

It was a sterile, well-lit bunker.

Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, illuminating stainless steel counters, a ham radio setup, and a heavy surgical table bolted to the concrete floor.

Lorenzo had been the Corsican outfit’s premier trauma surgeon for thirty years before retiring to this hidden cove.

They dropped Anthony onto the steel table.

Lorenzo immediately went to work, his movements brutally efficient.

He grabbed a pair of heavy trauma shears and cut the remaining fabric of Anthony’s sweatpants and tactical shirt away, tossing the ruined clothing to the floor.

“Hold his shoulders down,” Lorenzo ordered, snapping on a pair of latex gloves.

“If he wakes up during this, he’s going to thrash. If he thrashes, I might sever an artery.”

Natalie braced herself over the head of the table, gripping Anthony’s broad shoulders.

Her hand sank into his cold, clammy skin.

Lorenzo unwrapped Natalie’s makeshift bandage.

He grunted in faint approval at the tight knot, then flooded the wound with sterile saline.

He didn’t use anesthesia.

He didn’t have time.

He picked up a long pair of forceps and dug directly into the raw, torn muscle of Anthony’s bicep.

Anthony’s eyes flew open.

They were wild, unseeing, blown wide with absolute agony.

A roar of a guttural scream ripped from his chest, and his body bowed upward off the table.

“Hold him!” Lorenzo barked.

Natalie leaned all her weight onto Anthony’s chest.

She pressed her forehead against the side of his face, her lips brushing his ear.

“Stay with me, Anthony. Look at me.”

He thrashed wildly, his right hand flying up and catching Natalie by the throat.

It was a blind, instinctual reflex.

His grip was a vice, cutting off her air.

Natalie didn’t fight him.

She didn’t pull away.

She just stared directly into his panicked, fever-bright eyes, refusing to break contact.

“It’s just business,” she choked out, forcing the familiar words into the space between them.

“Don’t you dare breach the contract now.”

Anthony’s pupils contracted.

He saw her.

The wild animal terror slowly receded, replaced by a grueling, conscious endurance.

His grip on her throat loosened, his hand dropping heavily to the steel table.

He locked eyes with her, his breathing ragged, and nodded once.

“Got it,” Lorenzo muttered, pulling a jagged, blood-soaked piece of metal from the muscle.

He tossed it into a metal kidney dish with a sharp clink.

For the next hour, Natalie stood over him while Lorenzo cleaned, packed, and stitched the wound.

Anthony passed out twice, the pain finally overriding his nervous system.

When the old surgeon finished tying off the last suture, he injected Anthony with a massive dose of broad-spectrum antibiotics and covered him with a heavy thermal blanket.

“He will sleep now,” Lorenzo said, stripping off his bloody gloves.

“If the fever breaks by morning, he lives. If the infection hits his bloodstream, he dies.”

Natalie slumped against the concrete wall, sliding down until she hit the floor.

Her entire body ached.

Lorenzo walked over to the ham radio in the corner.

He flipped a series of switches, dialing into an encrypted frequency.

He put on a headset and spoke rapidly in Sicilian for several minutes.

Natalie watched him, too exhausted to move.

When Lorenzo finally pulled the headset off, his weathered face was grim.

He walked over to a small kitchenette, poured a cup of black coffee from a glass pot, and handed it to Natalie.

“You are Liam Smith’s daughter,” he said.

It wasn’t a question.

Natalie wrapped her freezing hands around the ceramic mug.

“I am.”

“Words travel fast on the wire,” Lorenzo said softly, leaning against the counter.

“The Romano compound in Corsica burned to the ground four hours ago. No survivors were found. The Chicago capos are already meeting.”

Natalie took a slow sip of the scalding coffee.

“Who called the meeting? Your father?”

Lorenzo replied, his voice devoid of pity.

“He told the commission that Anthony was killed by a rival crew in a targeted ambush. He claimed you died beside him. As Anthony’s father-in-law, Liam is stepping in to stabilize the Romano assets. He is taking over the city.”

Natalie stopped drinking.

She stared at the dark liquid in her cup.

She had known her father was ruthless.

She had known he viewed her as a bargaining chip.

But to order a hit on her honeymoon, to orchestrate her murder just to clear a path to the Romano empire—a strange, freezing calm washed over her.

The last tie she had to her old life severed, snapping cleanly in the quiet of the bunker.

She wasn’t a Smith anymore.

She looked across the room at the man lying on the steel table.

Anthony Romano, her husband, her only ally.

“Do you have a secure phone?” Natalie asked, her voice deadly quiet.

Lorenzo raised an eyebrow.

“I do.”

“Good,” she said, setting the coffee mug down.

“When he wakes up, we have a war to plan.”

Anthony woke to the smell of black coffee and gun oil.

He didn’t open his eyes immediately.

He took a slow, deliberate inventory of his body.

The blinding, white-hot agony in his arm had receded into a deep, throbbing ache.

The fever that had been cooking his brain was gone, leaving him feeling hollowed out and incredibly weak, but clear-headed.

He could feel the heavy tug of thick stitches against his skin.

He opened his eyes.

The harsh fluorescent lights of the bunker made him squint.

Natalie was sitting in a metal folding chair a few feet away.

She was wearing an oversized gray flannel shirt that clearly belonged to Lorenzo, her wet hair brushed back and tied at the nape of her neck.

She held a disassembled Glock 19 in her lap, methodically wiping down the slide with a rag.

She looked up, sensing his gaze.

“You’re awake.”

“How long?” Anthony’s voice was a dry, cracking rasp.

“Thirty-six hours,” Natalie said smoothly.

She set the slide down and walked over to a small table, pouring a glass of water.

She brought it to him, slipping her hand behind his neck to help him sit up slightly.

Anthony drank greedily, the cold water soothing his raw throat.

He fell back against the pillow, staring at her.

She didn’t look like a hostage anymore.

The terrified bride had been replaced by someone sharp, focused, and incredibly dangerous.

“Lorenzo?” Anthony asked.

“He went into town to secure supplies and a vehicle.”

Natalie sat back down in the folding chair, picking up the gun frame.

“Your arm is clean. No infection, but you’re sidelined from heavy lifting for at least a month.”

Anthony let out a dry, humorless laugh.

“A month? By then, whoever hit the villa will have divided up my territory.”

“They already are,” Natalie said.

She didn’t look up from the weapon in her hands.

She reassembled the slide with a sharp, practiced snap, racked it to check the action, and set the gun on the table.

Then she looked Anthony dead in the eye.

“It was my father.”

Anthony froze.

The silence in the bunker thickened.

He watched her face, looking for the lie, looking for the hesitation.

There was none, just a cold, flat certainty.

“He called a summit in Chicago yesterday,” Natalie continued, her tone conversational as if she were reading a weather report.

“He told the capos we were killed in an ambush by the Moretti brothers. He used the tragedy to consolidate power. He’s absorbing your shipping lines right now.”

Anthony’s jaw tightened until the bone threatened to crack.

The pieces clicked into place.

The missing security guards, the cut phone lines, the precision of the hit.

Liam Smith had used his own daughter as bait to drop Anthony’s guard, writing her off as acceptable collateral damage.

“Natalie,” Anthony started, his voice thick.

He didn’t know what to say.

He knew betrayal, but a father sacrificing his own blood was a line even the mafia rarely crossed.

“Don’t,” Natalie cut him off sharply.

“Don’t pity me, Anthony. I’m done crying over a man who never loved me.”

She stood up, pacing slowly toward the foot of the steel table.

“Two days ago, you told me this marriage was just business,” she said, her voice dropping, taking on a hard, unyielding edge.

“You said I get your name, your protection, and your black card. In exchange, you get my father’s infrastructure. Is that still the deal?”

Anthony pushed himself up on his good elbow, ignoring the screaming protest of his stitched muscle.

He looked at the woman standing before him.

She had dragged him through miles of pitch-black catacombs.

She had stitched his flesh together with torn silk.

She had steered a boat through a tempest while he bled out on the deck.

She wasn’t an asset anymore.

She was an equal.

“The deal is broken,” Anthony said quietly.

Natalie’s eyes narrowed.

“Excuse me.”

“Liam violated the terms,” Anthony said, a dangerous, predatory calm settling over him.

“So, we write a new contract.”

He swung his legs over the side of the table.

He was dizzy, and his muscles shook with the effort, but he forced himself to stand.

He walked slowly toward her, stopping when they were inches apart.

He looked down into her eyes, seeing his own ruthlessness reflected back at him.

“You want my name,” Anthony murmured, his voice a low gravel.

“You have it, but protection isn’t enough anymore. You don’t hide behind me, Natalie. You stand beside me.”

Natalie’s breath hitched.

She looked up at the scarred, battered face of her husband.

The invisible wall they had built between them in Chicago was gone, burned away by gunpowder and salt water.

“And what do you get in this new contract?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Anthony reached out with his right hand.

He gently traced the line of her jaw, his thumb brushing over a faint bruise left by his own panicked grip on the surgical table.

It was the first time he had touched her with genuine tenderness.

“I get the only person in this godforsaken world I can actually trust,” he said.

Natalie stared at him, the weight of his words settling deep in her chest.

She closed her eyes for a fraction of a second, leaning into his touch.

When she opened them, the cold fire was back.

“Lorenzo has a private plane waiting at a dirt strip thirty miles from here,” Natalie said, stepping back slightly.

“All business again. We leave tonight. We fly into Detroit, rent a car, and drive across the state line into Chicago.”

“We’re going to need men,” Anthony said, his mind already shifting to tactical strategy.

“Liam controls the capos now.”

“We don’t need the capos,” Natalie countered, a ruthless smile playing on her lips.

“Before the communication lines went dark, Lorenzo got a message through to a safe house in the city. Leo is alive, and he’s pissed.”

Anthony laughed.

It was a dark, genuine sound that echoed off the concrete walls of the bunker.

“If Leo is alive, Liam is already on borrowed time.”

“My father thinks he buried us,” Natalie said, turning to pick up the Glock from the table.

She checked the magazine, the brass casings gleaming under the harsh lights, and slammed it home with a satisfying click.

She handed the weapon to Anthony.

“Let’s go show him that ghosts don’t negotiate.”